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Week 8 - The Last Week

These weeks really do pass too fast.

Am I starting to sound repetitive yet? I feel repetitive.

I did do a couple of interesting things this week, but didn't post about them when I did, and as time passed they grew less inspiring to write about. Instead, as the week comes to an end I delve into the obligatory weekly blog, conjuring the routine and rushed up summary of weekly does and events as always.

It does serve certain purpose having an ongoing overview of my life, on a weekly basis. It's something I might derive useful insights from in the future, as might anyone else following these rambles, but at the same time it's a chore, and since it feels that way it serves less purpose. It's gone from being an extensive recollection of events to something just to keep going. To keep writing. To keep the tradition alive. From something that summed up the week with introspective, accomplishments and optimisms, to just a repeat of old routine over and over.

I've been going with these weekly posts almost every week since 2013, as well as back in 2008. In the beginning it felt like a good way to get organized, but eventually started feeling more like an obsession, and the focus moved from a new week! to another week... I stuck to it even when I didn't feel like it, though I think it started feeling conclusively outplayed some time last year. I tested swapping out the Week ## - Title format to simply titles for a few weeks, but that didn't change the fact that they were still weekly posts. They just made them harder to differentiate from normal posts - which might've been what I wanted to make them then, but I fell back to the old routine and kept going.

Even as I write this I feel compelled to write this like the routine weekly post. It sticks. I want to say that I spent most of today watching music videos, and how I've played out the remaining episodes of DOOM again, and am on my way through the second game today. I was planning to take on TNT after that, but I'm growing bored. The levels of the second game are often erratic and open, without the linear design that makes it easy to find the exit. I end up beating the bad guys as best as I can, and then just clip my way through walls in search for the way out, at which point the journey loses it's appeal. When I beat it like this it won't be beating it for real, and if I'm playing it just to play it through as it's supposed to be played - something I'm honestly not sure I've done with any other than the original three episodes, albeit many times over with those, it feels like a lost cause. Why play a game if it isn't fun?

And that's about the point of this week's summary... or lack thereof. Why am I focusing on superficial accomplishments when there are so many more inspiring things that I could, and want, to do? That's why it feels like time just flies away. And does. If there's time over I make up trivial tasks to fill the gaps. Inconspicuous but highly irrelevant spin-off goals that get me nowhere, and in the long run don't do me much good. It's really about more than the blog, but the routine weekly posts feel like counterfuel to a lack of creative fire.

Of course there are exceptions. It would be more optimistic to mention that I went to a light therapy cafe this Monday - which was great, warm and rejuvenating, and that I spent most of Saturday on an unexpected trip to Värmdö. I thought about writing about the light therapy cafe the same day I went there, but time was in short supply and I thought I'd better leave it for the weekend. Yesterday I pondered posting about the other trip, and about the recent Cloudbleed incident that had me checking my passwords the whole weekend, but didn't, because why not post all of that at once. Now. In the summary.

If there was no later maybe I'd have written those posts right away, and with the details fresh in mind they'd have been ten times as good as if I'd recollect them now. Then again maybe I wouldn't get to writing them anyway, and without a weekly post like this you'd never have been the wiser what I'd been up to. But does that really matter? I feel like I'll want to write a blog about events that I appreciate, but if I play through a few episodes of DOOM in spontaneous obsession: what's that to you? I'm sure you'd rather read my impressions on the new game, which I summed up pretty well when I finished it a couple weeks back, but didn't get to posting since guess what? I tumbled back into my routines. The weekly posts that take up all that time, and the false accomplishments I make for myself so that I may collect them in this cage I've made for myself. If that is why.

Writing continuously might feel like a good thing - a routine accomplishment of content. Routine. Comfort zone. Same thing. Gotta get out of that zone to get in my zone and stay creative, so that's what I'm doing now. The blog in itself is it's own comfort zone of course, but I hope it's a larger zone. One where you can travel around and see new things, and be both comfortable and inspired at the same time.

Wait, I take that back. Routine and comfort zone is not the same thing. Is this blog a comfort zone? Is it a zone, and the routine a comfort? Only thing I know for certain is I find both comfort and calamity in my habits, and I'm a very habitual person. I also know that the longer it goes the harder it is to break a habit - especially the bad ones.

This might not class as your typical bad habit, but it's a time-consuming and unnecessary one. This car's pretty much out of gas at this point anyway. It's time for a brake. It's about time to stop doing things I've been doing too long and embark to the more inspiring ground: that of spontaneous and occasional writing, like how I used to do. Writings whenever inspiration strikes instead of the scheduled and omniscient ones. Or if spontaneity fails: writing with a goal.

I should probably let a bunch of other routines go the same way as these weekly posts, like the Musicalish ones, but they might still serve a purpose. I still have music videos I want to share, and posting them one at a time would flood the blog and leave you with little other content. Without the weeklies... will there be other content? I hope so. I'm pretty excited about letting go of this habit, and that seems like a good sign.

I haven't posted a thing on the blog since last week, which goes to show how far gone this thing is. I've written a few drafts, though, and rid myself of a few old ones too in a vain attempt at clearing out everything unfinished and feeling like I have it under control.

But control's not having a clean and empty post draft page: it's about being able to sit down with a blank text box when you have something to write about, and write the shit out of that text box then and there. That feels good. That's a feeling I've been starting to forget, but it's all coming back. Like riding a unicycle.

Here's a link to last week for the last time. If you want to skim through my life in a straight line in the future, you'll have to do so via the yearly archives, or the life category. There's no way to do both... yet, but until there's demand for it, that's one unnecessary project I'm not even starting with. And if this whole non-weekly thing doesn't work out as I expect it to... well then, better fuel the car and get driving again. There's always room for a follow-up post debunking my thoughts and theories in this one if they were all wrong.

Maybe I'm just leaving my new habits behind to jump back to my old ones: that of writing whenever I have things to write, and feeling like I have to write as soon as I do. And writing way too long posts because self-reflection keeps feeding you new realizations, making it difficult to find a suitable place to stop analyzing and just leave it be. If there was no more there wouldn't be more to write about after all, but for now I think I'll leave it here. Optimistically. And incredibly run-on.

I feel like I'm climbing onto new ground. Like something great is just waiting around the corner. A bit like I used to feel with each New Year... before I turned those into routine too. If getting rid of these weekly routine's is a boulder off my back, I'll push off the New Year Mountain next. Week 9, and all the other ones in line! It's time.

Week 7 - Games & Valentimes

So, what have I been doing with this one? I've caught up with Project 2017 recordings: 5 6 and 7. I started the week with a manga swap, celebrated a relative's birthday with board games yesterday, and my dad's 74th this Tuesday - which just so happens to be Valentine's Day! A hearty occasion always, though not so much time for Valentine.

Otherwise it's been work and games, mostly. Do you want facts? How about music? Here's some other stuff posted on the blog, as well as a new batch of six overdue reviews. I've been doing some bidding and buying too - more GB/C/A games, though seems that phase is just about played out now.

Remember Glimmerati? The trailer was pretty cool. The game? Not so... judging by gameplay footage. I haven't tried it myself. Unlike buddy Bear I never owned an N-Gage, but I just found out it was actually developed by Bugbear, the same dudes behind such legendary car games as Flat Out, and always striving to take it further with their Next Car Game (up until recently it was actually titled Next Car Game).

Looking at Glimmerati game footage it's interesting how our perceptions of good change with time, though some games seem to last forever, like the original DOOM. I played out the Plutonia Experiment for maybe the first time ever without cheats this week... excluding a little idclipping when I lost my way. Decided to play it on Hurt Me Plenty in hopes I'd actually complete it, as previous attempts at trying it in Ultra Violence (as I easily play the originals) all failed.

These extra episodes really are gruelingly hard if you're not a seasoned vet - ready for all surprises they carry, and maybe they're a challenge even for those who are. It took plenty of trial and error to make it even with regular difficulty, and frequent use of GZDoom's highly appreciated autosave feature. But I did it!

I'm pondering repeating the challenge with TNT next, or maybe Thy Flesh Consumed, both of them episodes I'm not sure I've ever played through in their entirety. At least not without cheats.

Last week? Here. That's about it. Day's short. Night's nigh. Times fly. I took a nostalgic speedrun through the first episode of DOOM yesterday, and hope to get through the second episode right after I post this... with a little upgrade enabled. Ciao for now; see you soon!

CDB Updates:

  • Fixed missing blog count on Stats page.
  • Fixed the yearly episode count correction in the Anime sidebar.
  • Updated poem selection on Poetry page, among other things.
  • Minor blog edits; fixes.

Week 6 - Games & Manga

These weeks are just going too fast! Too Fast And Furious 6, and I haven't posted a thing on the blog since last week - though I do have a few drafts in the pipeline. More like copper cable. More like broadband. Here's a link to last week anyway, in lack of others. I'll keep this post short cause nothing's really happened and I'm two days late.

Well, a few things: I sold those consoles I didn't get to sell last week, and bought some old stuff while I was at it. For anyone who has old games to spare (and lives in Sweden) I'd recommend Mediapalatset. It does pay more to sell directly to a buyer, but if you didn't buy the stuff at retail value anyway, just want to get it out the way - or both, this is a simple alternative. It's a small, family-owned shop that seem genuinely interested in their stuff, with fair prices and pristine product.

I was just planning to drop off the consoles and fetch an order when I went there, but ended up talking to the owner about old consoles for maybe an hour, learning how to change a GBC cartridge battery, and getting a tour of their business. I doubt they have time to spend that amount of time with every customer, but it left a great first impression. Will be happy to do business with them again... though I don't plan on selling anything more anytime soon. Well, there's always buying.

In other game-related happenings I played out the new DOOM this week... at least I think it was this week, and have started up my old nightly Advance Wars DS routine again - against my better judgment. I've also been bidding on some games for GB and GBA that I doubt I'll have time to play, but have yet to have. At least they don't take up that much space. There's just something about cartridges compared to the more spinnable mediums, and portable over stationary consoles - which is strange considering I really wouldn't use a laptop as long as I have a stationary computer nearby.

Speaking of computers: mine's running well this week, so hopefully those RAM issues were a temporary thing. Still haven't adjusted the RAM on my gaming rig though. It's running smoothly without.

I've also read out .Hack, kept going with Dragon Ball, finally finished Project 2016, and... not much notable else. Here's some more irrelevant loading time comparisons for my other site, here's some sound cloud SPAM, and why not a couple recent bugs I stumbled upon while I'm at it. I fixed the latter one btw, and actually didn't catch the screencap irony till I wrote this. It could've had its own post, that one. Leftover screencaps in lack of meaningful post content? Have at it!

I'll see yall next week... or sooner. Hopefully with a bit more to post.

CDB Updates:

  • Minor blog edits; fixes.

Week 5 - Hi, Five

I've been looking at different webhosts recently, and I found this one that seemed promising, but reading through their terms they only provide 'positive' hosting. No foul language. No obscene words. What? Fuck that.

I don't usually say so, but I'm excessively anti self-censorship. PIPA, SOPA, CETA, TTIP... nothing good comes from any agreements that tinker with your rights to freedom of speech and... well, freedom. Be it international trade agreements, copyright law, or a tick in a webhost ToS. If that's how it has to be, then it has to be like that. Total freedom of speech for the sake of it, even if I might never need that total freedom.

Why? Peace of mind? Futureproofing? I like to think I'm thinking of the world when I think of things like this, and what a crappy place it would be if we weren't able to make a stand, or speak our mind, or aggravate as to overcome our and everyone else's problems. Better obscenity than violence, right? Better vent than leave a dent, right? Better savor what's left, right? Move onward, when you're down. Fight.

I'm really starting to consider a new host though. Ever since a recent server 'upgrade' the site's been taking aggravatingly long to load... sometimes.

It's not balanced at all. Sometimes it's fine. Sometimes it's all but. Sometimes I wonder if my server's being DDoS'd - and my host is throttling traffic. Sometimes I wonder if they're throttling traffic anyway just to make me upgrade, since they have previously recommended Performance hosting rather than Shared.

But that was a long time ago. I took steps to decrease my resource usage back then, and since then acceptable usage has been rising at a speedier pace than my usage (or rather: people's usage of my site), so hopefully that's no longer a necessity. Honestly the traffic here has dwindled a lot since it's heyday, which was way back in... I-don't-even-remember-when. Back when I had time for this place. Back when it was under constant and ever-evolving development. Uncontrollable development, you could say.

The pace is slower but also refined now. I don't do things at whim and render earlier updates useless, old links unreachable, search results changed... I just leave already useless updates and unreachable links ditto because of a major lack of time when it comes to fixing things.

But the point is: resource usage shouldn't be the problem; my host shouldn't be giving me problem because of it. The site is just too slow. I suppose I should contact my support about this, though I fear they might either ask me to pay more - as per their potential shady resource-limiting tactics in favor of performance upgrades, or they won't know anything about it, at which point it'd be a misuse of time, and miscredit to my name. And worse: maybe my site really is hogging resources at certain times of day and needs to be throttled, resulting in all these issues. Since I started writing this everything's loading faster though. These loading time comparisons are no longer relevant. I guess I'll stick to my current host... for now, and see what happens.

This week though? It's been eventful. January passed in a flash though. I need to quit saying I hope and say I will catch up this month... and not this week, because I've barely accomplished a thing this week short of fueling old conversations and confiding in hobbies when time grew short. I had a boardgaming day with relatives this Saturday though, a lucrative shopping spree/day out today, and as for the rest of the week: I bought another bag of manga on Monday, and was supposed to sell a couple of consoles this Friday (and Wednesday, and Tuesday - it was a complicated process finding a time that matched), but the buyer never showed up! And shortly after couldn't be reached by either phone, or email, or via the sales site his offer was posted on. So I wonder what that was all about. Seems a bit suspect.

I have another buyer in line though, and if you're wondering why I'm selling stuff: it's because I keep buying stuff, and there just isn't enough space for all this stuff. Time to finally rinse out some things I don't need that might be worth a thing or two too, even if I should probably stop purchasing new stuff while I'm at it. It's not so easy to let go of either things or habits though. It's in both my genes and horoscope.

I haven't delved any more into DOOM, or Trackmania, or Bombshell this week - but I have read through 14 numbers of Bleach, 10 of Dragon Ball, and the little Death Note I had left before my books ran out. Hopefully the numbers I'm looking for aren't too far away.

In computer news my (main) computer started whining again one day. BIOS. I opened it up, picked out the RAM and put it back in aaand... it's working again. Wonder what that was all about.

Here's a few posts, last week, and good night! I didn't manage to record the track of the day before the house went dark and everyone else was asleep, but that should be up soon. Till later, enjoy; make the most of the remaining 38 minutes of this grand weekend! ;)

CDB Updates:

  • Minor blog edits; fixes.

Week 4 - Foursefully

It's been a good week, though it passed fast, with a bit too much time spent on superfluous activities... like YouTube. I've played through DOOM too (the Hurt me Plenty campaign - Ultra Violence up next), tried some Trackmania Turbo and Bombshell , and have been reading through the Death Note manga by night, though I need to get my hands on the remaining half to finish it. Bought a batch of other second-hand manga yesterday and have started making my way through Bleach too, though I don't have the whole set of those either. Hope to acquire more soon. Though I've been an avid anime watcher for over a decade now, the world of manga is new and exciting ground. The only ones I've been familiar with up to this point have been One Piece and Dragon Ball.

It's interesting to see how the originals differ from the animated versions, and oftentimes it really is better, not just because of the detailed artistry (as was the case with One Piece and Death Note - I'm a bit disappointed with the detail in Bleach... so far), but because there's no filler. None. Zilch. Why the need to repeat that denominator three times in a row is beyond me like universal truth, but there you have it, like Travis O'Guins radio host interviewer keeps concluding.

But anyway: I'm delving more and more into the world of manga lately, and happy with what I've found so far. After Bleach and Death Note there'll probably be a bit of .hack and Dragon Ball (which I've previously only read the first few numbers of), and hopefully I'll be able to complement my collection before I run out, so I can keep reading those aforementioned two. The Bleach manga just recently ended, so if I can just get my hands on all these pockets it's possible to read through it in its entirety. Same with Naruto, though I'd better not rush with that one. Too many simultaneous reads. I'm not even done with Harry Potter yet, which I stalled with halfway through a couple of years back, due to lack of sequelling books... which the library could provide. Maybe it's time.

In computer news I got my 4x4GB DDR3 RAM (Corsair, CL8 1600Mhz VENGEANCE LP), and opened up my gaming computer to put them in, and though I haven't really noticed a performance boost with the extra 8GB, it's working fine this time. Only problem is they're recognized by the system as only 1333Mhz, and I'm not sure how to change this. There's supposedly a setting for it in the BIOS, but an automatic overclocking attempt didn't set them right, so I suppose I'll have to dig a bit further and see which settings I need to tweak. It wasn't as obvious as I thought it would be. There's a lot of settings in there. Time to dig.

I haven't watched that many movies lately, but there's six overdue reviews for you just posted, the blog recently passed six thousand six hundred sixty six posts, and here's last week. Also. And here's the latest recordings. That's it. Till next week I'll hopefully be catching up on all the things I'm still trying to catch up on, and have time for more polished and philosophical posts. Ciao for now.

CDB Updates:

  • Minor blog edits; fixes.

Week 3 - Threedom

Three musicalish posts, three techish posts, three quote rations, three overdue reviews, and I just ordered some DDR3 RAM to upgrade my gaming computer. Also here's three recent albums on YT (by people I follow).

It's starting to fall into place. I'm slowly settling in(to the New Year), and though I was also planning on posting three music reviews, three anime reviews, three game reviews and three other posts too before I posted this... I'm still pretty happy with the daily does. Not thinking, just doing - that's the secret. Getting up before lunch is another secret. And this post is just slightly delayed, right? Just a couple of days. Just one day and one morning. Just one day and barely a night of sleep. Just one of those three, btw - whichever you prefer. No need to add up the times. That's just how these things are phrased. I'm feeling positive today. And efficient. Abrupt-like. Short sentences. Period. I'm back on D-Vitamin supplements too. Maybe that's the third secret.

Week 3 has been a good week overall. I've bought two packs of 24 vanilla popsicles each at just one dollar a piece, on two occasions. Yes that is one dollar for each pack. Organic. Bourbon vanilla. Real cream. No glucose shit. Insane price for quality ice cream. Less than a dollar per liter. If it wasn't a train ride away (on the way from work), from home I'd probably have filled the freezer, and the ones I did buy are disappearing at an alarming rate at home. Too much ice cream. Overall way too much sweet stuff lately. I apparently gained 10 kg this Christmas. Which is too much. Not all at once, but it all amounts quicker than you might realize if you don't get in some serious exercise sessions amidst all that good food. Time to make it like a trend: a passing fat.

Speaking of food: the whole family got together for an after-work dinner at Sally & Systrar this Wednesday, when my brother was in Stockholm for the day. Great food. Great visit. Real lifter of spirits. I took a shopping tour the day after, and watched a movie with a buddy (Top Secret! I mean that's the name of the movie), and went shopping both days of the weekend too. Tis been a rush. I've also started playing games again, which I shouldn't because I really don't have the time, and started reading Death Note, which is better than expected. I expect I might plow through most of the remaining books this week.

In computer news I've switched out my recently upgraded 5GB to 8GB (four identical 400MHz 2GB DDR2 - brand unremembered). I probably did something wrong during the upgrade, because right after the switch the computer wailed as soon as I turned it on. Panic. Calm. I took out the RAM and put it back in again, two at a time... and they all worked. No problems at all. Maybe one was loose. Maybe a cable was hanging over the mobo. I really don't know yo. I'm just happy it worked out.

Btw, ever considered following half an onion on Twitter? And if you're looking for last week's weekly post, here you go. That's all for now. I'm off to play some DOOM before a new day's nigh. Times fly.

CDB Updates:

  • Minor blog edits; fixes.
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