Let's try blogging

2024-07-19
Feeling: Excited
Listening to: Kaze by Guiano

I feel like doing more with this website, and I thought I'd try to start writing blog posts. I'm actually awful at writing and expressing myself, but I really just feel like coding some pages lol, so let's give it a try. This'll probably be a once every other month or so thing. In writing this I did end up changing the font on this site... I like Century Gothic aesthetically, but staring at previews of this post gave my tired eyes some strain, so I'm trialing boring old Tahoma for now for its nice thickness. Not sure what fonts are best for readability while also being a bit aesthetic in terms of default fonts that every device should be able to load. Might throw something else on later.

So first things first I guess, I changed the name I go by on the internet. I'd felt like dropping the previous one for a while, it didn't fully feel like it suited me anymore, and it had its origins as the shortened form of a 20 year old weeb-y username that was kind of cringe. I go by Maja now!

In other news, I had a flareup of hand issues some months back. Nothing unusual, been happening once or twice a year ever since sitting at the computer doing 3D modeling 24/7 for weeks at a time in university broke my body. Did my usual dance of seeing a physical therapist, being told it's probably tennis elbow and given a fifteenth brace and printout of stretches. This time I was referred to get x-ray and blood taken to try to find out if something's up, but they couldn't find anything that looked weird and my described symptoms just got a shrug as usual. I just live like this I guess. It's been a couple months, and my hands are back to their usual quickly tired out but usable state now.

Nothing much else happening in my life right now. Going to work, going home from work, eating, sleeping. I've really fallen back in love with video games lately, which was frustrating while my hands were doing worse, but I'm managing better now. Playing indies and older games, nothing pacifies the neurodivergence like occupying yourself with an audiovisual medium where your hands and brain are kept busy.

Media I've enjoyed lately
I played through Atelier Shallie, finally wrapping up the Dusk Atelier trilogy after first playing the PS3 version of Ayesha way back in the day. The aesthetics of this trilogy of games really can't be beat, absolutely love Hidari's art. Shallie afaik was the first game in the series to fully drop having a time limit, although Eschatology's time limit was already incredibly relaxed. The chapter progression in this first go without a time limit felt kind of haphazard, but it wasn't enough to annoy me or make me have a worse time. Writing in Atelier games is generally pretty slight, but I ended up really liking some of the cast in this game. Shallotte, Wilbell, Miruca and Julie, and Homura were all great characters to hang out with. Excited to slowly keep working on Atelier games once in a while, they're always relaxing.

I read A Memory Called Empire and its sequel A Desolation Called Peace. Or, listened to the audiobooks more specifically. Absolutely loved my time with both, just an incredibly engaging set of sci fi intrigue books with a really refreshing setting with an explicit focus on living under a colonialist society as a colonized citizen. I also shallowly really enjoyed the abundance of nonmale characters lol. From a cursory glance at the internet, it seems like most people like the second book more than the first, and I did particularly think the aliens introduced in the second book were really fun. But I admit I preferred the (relatively) smaller scale of the first book, the sci fi headmate mystery was what really got me hooked in the beginning and that aspect of the story was one of my favorite things through both books.

Photo Corner

Until next time!