Category: personal

a lot of things have happened this month that i wanted to talk about so for a short while please humour me as i go back to this format of posts.

from late july to early this month i was at a friend’s house for a week. we were a group of three for the majority of the week and i spent a lot of my time there just enjoying being with that group in person for the first time in years. we went looking for used game deals, i ended up with a sizable increase to my PS4 collection and a used PS5 in existent condition that i’m going to try to make look nicer later on. i plan on using it to get back into buying games used, with some help from an amazing website known as “DoesItPlay?“. unfortunately its firmware wasn’t old enough to be exploitable (which was of course unsurprising), hence why i’m not making a full post on it. i will however talk about my first impressions. in terms of design, i prefer the interface of the PS4 but in terms of usability i do prefer how fast and easy to navigate the PS5 is in comparison. the controller i have mixed feelings about. i love the adaptive triggers loads and feel they add to immersion a lot more than i first thought they would honestly but my hands find the DualShock 4 more comfortable and as a result i find myself picking that up over the DualSense whenever i’m able to use that instead. as for the other things that happened, a lot of music listening, gaming, i repasted my mate’s ps3 (it runs a lot better now) and i walked around aimlessly for a while and found these really nice looking gardens.

not long after i got back home, i found a cheap 1080p monitor on eBay that i bought because i had been wanting a third monitor for quite a while now. it turned up and yeah, my god is a third monitor a really helpful thing to have for the way i use a computer (a lot of multitasking, believe it or not). speaking of multiple screens too, VR. VRChat has decided it’s time to take over my soul yet again and so i’m back in there now. the group that gave me access to age restricted instances back when they were in private beta decided to start actually doing age restricted instances again some time between my absence and now and so that’s where i’ve spent a lot of my time in VRC (along with a couple friends too, of course). upon entering one of these instances, you immediately notice something. something off. in a good way. you’re in a public that’s actually civil! from my experience in the ones i spend my time in, issues are very rarely caused by anyone and when they are moderators take care of them while still giving the people causing issues a chance to stop being a cunt and stay in the instance. my return (along with the third monitor) has gotten me back into avatar stuff a little. i’m working on a different approach to getting the Nia avatar to work on mobile. it’s looking good so far, and said approach means that i don’t have to decimate the model to make it fit within the mobile performance limits. it does mean however that its performance rank won’t be as good as originally promised which is unfortunate cause that was the main reason for making the avatar mobile compatible in the first place. i underestimated the difficulty of making it a good performance rank while keeping it looking and working well. maybe in the future if i get better at this stuff i can optimise it a bit more.

i decided to charge the MacBook while rendering video too. that was a bad idea apparently. i saw a flash at some point during the process that i for some reason just thought was like a notification on my phone. i look at the Mac a few seconds later and notice it’s not charging. i mess about with the charger a little and that doesn’t get it to charge again so i decide to replace the fuse in the plug as a troubleshooting step. i plug it back in and there’s that flash again! there’s your reminder to not use fake chargers i suppose. i tried buying a new charger (an official one this time) and the Mac blew the fuse on that one too, so i bought a new MagSafe port board and turns out that’s the wrong one and the right one for the model i have is like £40. don’t know what i’m gonna do about that one really cause i fear that the issue is gonna be something deeper than the MagSafe port anyway. it kinda just ruined my want to use that Mac and increased my want to buy things that are more repairable going forward if i’m being honest. my final thought on this situation is that this video cost me one 2015 MacBook Pro to make and so you should watch it or something. and while you do that i’ll look at buying a Framework and do nothing more than look for a good while now because of that price and because i want an upgrade to my desktop first. (or do i? it’s Haswell. it doesn’t get much better than that really.)

… as of April 1st and i actually managed to post at least one thing every month. well done me. so as a bit of a celebration of the fact that there’s at least one thing i’ve been able to keep going consistently for a year i’ll talk about some things. some good things. some happy things. some present things. some future things.

first off, the Nia avatar’s done now. here’s the link. it’s actually public and people can use it (once i’ve put it in the world). the mobile/quest model looks a bit shit in some places due to the decimation but it has all the same outfits the PC version has (they don’t take up much vram at all either) and for general use i’m sure it’d be perfectly fine. (apart from a bug with leg movement that’s currently present in it.) the PC version of course more so, as it does just use a copy of the actual model ripped from my own copy of the game (with some modifications to make it work well in vrchat).

as well as that i’ve got some updates to make here. my physical collection has increased a good bit since i last modified the collection page so i’ll be sorting that out shortly before or after this post is up. i have a ps4 now, i’ll make a post about it soon. unfortunately can’t go too in-depth on this one though cause its firmware was too new to be exploitable. i’ve got a guide on how to diagnose (and potentially fix) some hardware faults and bricks on the wii u using only software (and an sd card) in the works too. that should be up soon.

it’s been quite a nice first year. making this place has given me somewhere to talk about anything and being able to do that is indeed quite nice.

not about anything bad, quite the opposite actually. so why dont i talk about what i’ve been thinking about here. as i predicted back in june the stress i had been experiencing back then has got significantly better, to the point that i’ve finally been able to enjoy going back out, walking, shopping, all those things i used to do before school fucked me up. over christmas and the new year i had a great time, spent loads of time with friends and family, ate a good bit, done all those things you do with people over that time. i hope you had an enjoyable time over the holidays too. i’ve been sleeping quite well as well, finally got back into a sleeping routine and now it feels like a day lasts both 8 years and 8 seconds at the same time. a lot more time to spend in the day since i’m getting up earlier but as i’ve learned the hard way time really does go by quickly as you age.

now let’s talk about the future. the very near future i mean. like next month. now that the holidays are basically over, it would make sense to start exercising properly again. i should get back into a routine really, before i decide to retreat to my chair yet again. i’ve got high hopes i won’t though, turns out listening to music while you exercise sure makes it go by quickly. and now that the cooker’s fixed i can eat a bit more properly again so that’ll be nice, believe it or not i enjoy eating healthily and microwave meals aren’t exactly appetising after the third week of them. regarding vrchat avatars absolutely no progress has been made, regarding actually playing vrchat, well turns out my index controllers had faulty finger tracking from the factory. first couple weeks in i just didnt care cause i wanted to actually use the things but now i’ve sent the broken controller back and am waiting on a replacement. its been two weeks please help.

well, that’s what my january thoughts have been like. why dont you share yours with me? my discord, steam and bluesky are linked on the website’s footer, or if you’d like to use a service that gives you a bit more freedom of choice my email is lana at woomy dot sh. i’d love to hear what you have to say! :D

hello again. in all honesty i haven’t been all too motivated over the past couple months to write anything, if you couldn’t tell. therefore i’ve decided to make another monthly update post as opposed to a more ‘proper’ writeup of something i’ve got over that time. said writeups will return soon however, as i’m beginning to get more motivated.

so regarding the vr hardware i promised to talk about last month: i bought index controllers like 5 years late!!! believe it or not, they’re considerably better than wands. before i got them i loved the wands and their massive trackpad, thought it would have been easier to use than sticks, didn’t really understand the point of the extra buttons either. i now understand. only issues i’ve really had with them is that the right ring finger will not track at all, no matter how much i drum on the controllers and the right controller’s tracking is a bit dodgy too.

and regarding vrchat yet again: more avatar work. bought rusk and some extra outfits for it, i’ve been setting that up. blade nia is now being worked on. the xenoblade avatars i briefly talked about last month are closer to being done.

thanks for reading, happy new year! :D

this month i haven’t had any new things turning up for me to talk about so i just thought i’d talk about this month as a whole for me instead and a few things i’ve been doing.

so i got back into vr. quite a bit. on the vrchat side i’ve been doing more avatar work, figured out how to make metallic parts of a model actually metallic, started work on a Pyra avatar as well, i’ll probably have all my public avatars actually public soon which will be nice cause as far as i can see xenoblade 2 avatars aren’t really a thing on quest, much less ones that are rated a higher performance rank. the models on my quest versions did unfortunately have to be decimated a bit but doing that means that they’re currently rated Good. regarding actually gaming in vr i got back into beat saber a bit, streamed it for around 10 days and i’ll probably start streaming it again soon cause i found that it is a really fun way to play through the game, not giving a damn about rank and instead just focusing on random shit nobody’s ever heard of. and i’ve got some new vr hardware on the way that i’ll save for december’s post.

all the stress i’ve felt because of it should hopefully start to go away. now that school is out of my life i can work on bettering myself since i have time! there’s a lot i’ve been wanting to do for the longest time ever that i can now finally start working on. some of it’s gonna take a while since i’ll need to have some form of income before i can start (e.g. almost anything regarding hardware mods, especially ones that require soldering) but the less costly things like improving my programming ability can be done. might try to learn some form of C. i’d love to become a homebrew dev, and i have a slight feeling that javascript isn’t really gonna help me with becoming that. also either way i’ve really got to stop with my laziness so doing something like that sounds like a fun way to stop it. i wanna be more productive now.

hello to the -1 people who visit this site, i’m sorry for my lack of posts. i have a couple things in my drafts that i’m just finishing but in the meantime i really want to write something that you’ll see today so here that something is.

as of now it’s 10:44 pm. i’m just about to go to bed now that my sleep schedule is a lot better, (barely) ready for another day at school. thankfully i only have 2 lessons at most a day, unfortunately being in school these days is stressful as fuck. it’s gotten a lot better over the (almost) 2 years i’ve been in post-16 education, partly thanks to being able to drop out of one of my courses, and a very big part due to me being able to find ways to calm down my constant stress. i can’t wait for this school crap to all be over, surprisingly enough i’m actually really interested in going into the world of work. i have been since i was around 13 so the fact that i’ll be able to start looking for jobs soon is exciting to me.

but before that happens i have to keep on worrying about school. exams start in just under a week, they don’t end till late June. and i don’t even know why i’m worrying about them because it doesn’t really matter if i pass or fail. but here i am. worrying about them. i wish i could just be freed of this hell so that i can focus on bettering myself without the stress of being at school always lingering, ready to nearly throw me into another panic attack out of nowhere again.

but oh well. that’s where i’ve been. school is almost finished once and for all though! (there’s no way in hell i’m going to uni after this shit.) i’ll continue being as active as my mind will let me be as i’ve figured out that writing here is a really enjoyable thing. it also helps me put my mind off the things that have been torturing me mentally for the past year now.

as of now it’s 11:08 pm. i’m going to bed now. all my lessons are in the morning so i’ll probably be home by 1 pm at the latest. gives me some time to do the things in my life that don’t cause me to panic out of nowhere.

if you’re not a bot and you’ve read this far, thank you.

good night, see you tomorrow :D