2026-04-15 march in review

WHATEVER. i'm posting this. the Thesis Statement i struggled to draft is that, despite february's fretting about money, i spent a lot of money anyway. in my defense most of that was unexpectedly large taxes. the Event Of The Month and the shameful portion of the expenses is that i went to a local retro gaming con at a mall with my brother and tragically lost over 200 dollars to the throes of nostalgia and curiosity for eras i hadn't experienced.

thus, i've been playing games instead of browsing uselessly more and more, though i may already need to moderate this too, seeing as it is also a measure of useless, and additionally causes my hands some pain.... but like anything else: better than scrolling twitter.

since the highlight of march was The Gaming, i'll let the media list consume the bulk of this entry. goals first:

1. read 12 books - barely finished a book by the end of the month, nearly putting me behind the pace. at this point i'm only reading for 25 minutes during my lunch breaks at work, which itself is only 3 days a week.... i gotta bring back reading at home.
2. learn php - i made a TOOL! i had used an online wheel spinner to help me choose a random game to play amongst the ones i owned, but i wanted to be able to weigh the rng towards a particular console in accordance with my whims, so i Took Matters Into My Own Hands. i knew exactly how to write the logic, it was tracking down what syntax i needed to point at particular parts of an array that took the bulk of my time.... BUT I DID IT!!!! a working tool in pure php!!!! the presentation is incredibly scuffed because i don't know enough javascript to display the results without page loads (lol), so i made some "innovative" use of html collapsibles to voluntarily hide the two types of results until i optionally input the console choices. i'd put this on my site for my own use if i could, but i have to move to a php-compatible host first.
   
   as for my learning metrics........... textbook 17% (+2%) and video course 9% (+1%). i think i ought to change my goal to "finish php textbook+course" to make it more concrete and focused. not to say i shouldn't go off and make my own tools (practical application is the most important element of learning) but that i think it best to center my efforts around a measurable form of progress.
3. get a license + car - still saving for class :')
4. spend less time on social media - might need to make this "and minecraft"
5. draw!! - like last month, i've achieved a handful of sticky note doodles and a small doodling session. i'm starting to realize just how many thoughts i have that i used to turn into drawings, so i want to reestablish that connection.... i just have so much of my day where i "can't" draw because i'm getting ready for work, going to work, being at work, going home from work, etc etc.... my time at home is very competitive. maybe i ought to try making it a habit to get on my tablet as soon as i get home.... (the webmaster is having delusions of grandeur again)

games

• final fantasy tactics advance - bought this at the mall con, which led to me buying a gameboy advance off another guy the same day when i remembered that my ds lite (the only console i owned that could play gba games) kinda doesn't work no more. ffta is cute and feels familiar since i've played pokemon conquest, another isometric turn-based strategy. the direction your characters are facing seems more important in ffta, and it's way easier for enemies to get behind you, causing me to create turtle formations where my characters protect each other's backs. i'm not sure if accuracy is just an early game problem, but it's kinda crazy to work with a 50-75% hit chance in every engagement. i got way too attached to my randomly generated first clan members before learning that they're randomly generated.
• horsez (ds) - this was the result the first time i ran my random game picker for realz. you begin at a horse academy(?) and major in horse, choosing various activities throughout the week to get a good grade in horse. if you fail to get good enough grades, you have to start the week over. this happened to me because i did not know you have to learn dressage moves in the library before you can even perform them in dressage itself. i also physically couldn't get a perfect grade in cleaning the horse stalls because my dsi xl has a deadzone along one edge, so some of the dirty hay would lay just out of reach, unable to be collected and replaced. i guess horse academy doesn't offer accommodations :/
• petz hamsterz life 2 (ds) - the best part about used games is finding the previous owner's save file. a player named twizz got a golden hamster named cookie in 2010.... i couldn't bear to erase cookie, even if it meant not being able to see the start of the game. it's a tightly made game with a sleek, very japanese ui. apparently there's hamster breeding somewhere in here. cookie has been waiting 16 years for a mate; his patience will soon be rewarded....
• pokemon diamond - not a recent acquisition like all the others prior, rather this is my least recent acquisition as it is my very first personally owned video game, gifted to me for my birthday in 2008. i wanted to try shiny hunting with the poke radar since i don't remember ever getting good at it, and indeed the poketch app confirmed my highest streak of same-species consecutive encounters was only 14. shiny hunting is kinda funny to me now because it's like gacha with infinite pulls but no guarantee. every encounter you think, could this be the one? could i be lucky? until you start to grow sick of seeing the pokemon you'd initially felt such fondness and excitement for. poke radar chaining additionally comes with the fact that, outside of the unfortunate 2% chance your streak ends during optimal conditions, failure is entirely your fault. the first time i successfully reached the blissful chain of 40 encounters and started resetting to witness the 0.5% chance of the shining patch of grass, within a few minutes i stepped into the wrong patch by accident and broke my chain. my hunt for shiny snover lay untouched for the remainder of march.
• minecraft - as foreshadowed, i fell to the every-few-years urge to revisit minecraft. i forgot how crack cocaine it can be. i haven't played for any substantial length of time since the big cave update, so i kept finding a bunch of wholly new things i'd never seen before, and to make it more fun and cultivate a Sense Of Wonder i tried not to immediately look up all the details (instead i annoyed my siblings by liveblogging my lostness instead). many things still stay the same: i dig a staircase down to bedrock, i build extra houses for villagers, and i cultivate a horde of dogs to assist me in battle. i said before that i play unmodded, but this time around i got myself a couple qol mods: toggleable night vision (to help me see dark areas while my living room is being blasted with late afternoon sun) and binding an action to more than one key (so i can mine with my left hand, as holding down left click is rough on my dominant right hand these days).
• tomodachi life: living the dream (demo) - i had fun with the 3ds title back in the day, so i've been looking forward to the new one. i got right to work plugging my ocs into the demo using the new tools.
  

  aiden, bellamy, and aiden's "brother", florian

  i tried to do as much as i could with the mii components. aiden and florian's painted ears(?) are temporary until i see whether the wearable cat ears accessory (or maybe horns) looks better; otherwise the only face paint used is for the groove beneath florian's nose, a stand-in for the stock component since i couldn't use two facial line features from the same category at once.
  after the demo ended and my miis became shut-in preorder propaganda bots, i was itching to play tomodachi so bad that i pulled out my 3ds and booted up my old world. in it i was faced with an aiden from years past....

  it's cute how he resembles my older drawings

  and then i was confronted with the mii of an ex-girlfriend and a pair of her ocs. did you know tomodachi life for the 3ds complete in box goes for around $120 secondhand? i bought mine new for $17.49 in 2017. i've never considered selling any of my games, much less for such a passionless reason as inflated resale value, but....

books

• brave new world - i was really excited for this after loving 1984, but i think satire is not for me. slogged through it on my lunch breaks and was glad to be done with it. i do have to commend the character of bernard marx for the accurate depiction of an embarrassing type of man that still exists today.

music

• eidola - i wasn't too knowledgeable about this band beyond a couple songs, but i decided to commit to a concert because i've been wanting to see one of their guitarists (sergio medina), whose other bands i know and love are inactive or unavailable to me. just my (poor) luck, the corner of the barricade i managed to squeeze into was the opposite side of the stage from sergio.... but he was worth the outing, scurrying up and down the amps like a squirrel the way he does. i had fun getting really into their discography in the week leading up to the concert, though the flame went out just as quickly.

i can't very well make any april goals given that i'm in the middle of april now, so i'll just make prayers instead. please don't buy the pen please don't buy the pen please don't buy the pen