All The Updates of 2024 (So Far)
2024-10-20 - Come Together
So, the last month has been rather eventful if I do say so myself. I've lost data, I've had my girlfriend visit me and my boyfriend, I've been messing around with BMS editing software... but let's go through this one by one.
First of all, the hard drive I've been storing most of my stuff on decided that it no longer wished to store data. I've been having Windows complain about the hard drive having issues, but it never reported that there were any serious issues involving data corruption, and CrystalDiskInfo reported the drive's status as good. So, I thought it was no big deal until I tried editing an HTML file and it looked like... well just take a look for yourself:
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| This is why you should have backups. |
Yeah... turns out it's been going on for several months. Thankfully I had backups of all the most important things, so I didn't lose much data overall. I've checked the dying hard drive with a more robust tool called Victoria, and that one did report it as in danger, and a sector read/write test confirmed that the drive was going bad. Out of curiosity, I've decided to check what brand of hard drive it was, and well, turns out it's a Seagate, which are infamous for their spotty quality. Unfortunately, mine was a Seagate Rosewood, a hard drive model notorious for their high failure rate. Ah well, lesson learned.
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| ...and so the Heart of Corruption has been vanquished! |
Anyhow, I've got it replaced with a Samsung SSD, so it's all fine now. Still, quite the annoying experience, since restoring data from backups and redownloading things is a bit of a time sink and can be tedious at times.
On a positive note, my girlfriend finally visited us! She stayed over for a week, and she's a total snugglebug! Admittedly, very cute! Anyhow, we had a bunch of activities planned, and also bought a bunch of gluten-free food products because she's got a gluten allergy of some sort. Speaking of gluten-free food, one of those was gluten-free naan bread. Well, she tried it and said that it made her want to vomit. So, my boyfriend decided to check if it really was that bad, and while he didn't find it to be puke-inducing, he did agree that it was vile. So, I decided to try it and in my humble opinion, this naan bread is a crime. Seriously, it has the texture of leather and smells like beer. I couldn't get a bite in without gagging, and the aftertaste made me wish for the ability to turn off my tastebuds. Whoever made this bread should eat their own product as a punishment. If you gave this bread away for free, you would be tried at The Hague for human rights violations. Speaking from experience, you'd be better off biting into a bar of soap instead of this sheer blasphemy against Indian cuisine. Thankfully the other gluten-free products were just meh at worst, so we probably just got unlucky with this one.
As for the outings we had planned out, one of them was going to the Nationaal Videogame Museum, which I've talked about earlier this year. Well, this time we brought headphones and got us some E-AMUSEMENT cards. They've done some changes since my last visit, such as CHUNITHM getting upgraded to a newer version (don't remember if it was SUN or SUN PLUS) with one of the two cabs being a 120fps one, and a guitar and drum pair of a more recent version of GITADORA. I tried the guitar part. I struggled real bad at it >.<
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| I'm no Guitar Hero, and definitely no GITADORA. (People in the background have been censored to protect their privacy) (Well... apart from my boyfriend because he's my boyfriend) |
I spent most of my time on the CHUNITHM and Pop'n Music cabs, my boyfriend was having a blast playing WACCA, and my girlfriend was mainly doing beatmania IIDX with some CHUNITHM on the side. Overall it was a fun experience!
Another large outing that we had was taking a tour of De Haar castle, which is the biggest castle in The Netherlands. The castle had been rebuilt multiple times, with the version of it standing now being a brainchild of a Dutch baron and his baroness wife, who happened to be from the Rothschild family. Indeed, the castle is massive and excessive, as expected. I don't know how to describe it in words, so here's a bunch of pictures instead:
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| The castle in all its glory! Ah, and the full image is quite high resolution, so watch out! |
One thing to note is that my girlfriend is very much into languages, and is quite the polyglot! So, one of the pieces inside the castle had writing on it that one would easily mistake for being Chinese. Well, she recognized the text to be written in ancient Vietnamese, much to the surprise of everyone around, including (what I believe to be) a curator, who happened to be Vietnamese. Of course, my girlfriend couldn't really translate the text, as while she does know an impressive gamut of languages, Ancient Vietnamese is not one of them. Then again, you'd have better luck winning the lottery 10 times in a row than finding someone who can read this language. Also, at one place in the castle there is a chessboard that visitors are allowed to play on. My boyfriend and my girlfriend decided to play a whole game of chess there, which was kinda funny, but also a bit boring since I had to wait until they were done with their game. Overall, we enjoyed the trip around the castle!
There's a bunch of stuff that we wanted to do together but didn't get to, such as playing some board games (we did play Rummikub though) and trying out VR (a bunch of technical issues happening, since my boyfriend very rarely uses his VR set), but overall it was a very nice meeting her in person ^^
So, now for some BMS news, since that's what I'm best known for.
First up, I've been tweaking woslicerIII with a bunch of bugfixes, new features and obviously translating it into English.
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| Look at all those cool new options! |
As you can see, that's quite the improvement! However, I still need to figure out a bunch of stuff before I can make this public, so it's not available yet.
Another thing is me working on some new BMS tracks, since I haven't done that in a while. I've already finished a track, along with keysounding and charting, but the BGA is still being worked on (my girlfriend is the one making it this time :3) so it's not out yet! So, it'll be releasing next update, hopefully alongside a few more tracks.
Also, as you might've noticed, the image formatting is a bit different in this post. I've decided that these updates will now have images centered, since that looks better. This change has been applied to older posts too for consistency's sake. I think this looks a lot nicer :)
Anyhow, that's all for now, so see you next update and may you have a great day ^^
2024-08-08 - Like an Urchin
The updates are indeed quite sporadic and I haven't been as creative as I used to be. That doesn't mean that nothing has been happening.
First of all, if you've been following this website, then you know how much I enjoy Deep Rock Galactic. Considering how much I like the game, I thought it'd be a nice idea to review it. So, that's what I did! This is the first time I'm writing a proper review for anything, so this was also a nice challenge for me. So, if you wanna hear my thoughts about Deep Rock Galactic, then click here to check out my review!
Speaking of Deep Rock Galactic, I have reached beyond Legendary 3, with my dwarves being at the +1 Promotion level! Rock and Stone!
If you've read about my experience at a rhythm game arcade, then you know I have enjoyed a certain rhythm game quite a bit. Well, I've updated that article as I've got a TASOLLER now! But, there's a problem: There's barely any easily available content for UMIGURI! So, in order to remedy this, I've been working on a website that would host moderated content created for UMIGURI. There's still quite a lot of work to be done, but the most important parts are already in place. Currently the biggest worry is trying to have enough content to kickstart the website, so I'll have to create a bunch of stuff to have something. If you believe that you can help me out with this project, then feel free to contact me!
Speaking of web development, I've been asked by my boyfriend's father to build a website for his artwork. So, with a bit of my boyfriend's help, we've put a nice website together! If you wanna take a look at the site and the artwork contained within, click here to visit his site!
There's not much personal news, we went on a week-long vacation. The vacation was pretty uneventful, apart from me getting a new bag since the old one was falling apart. Also, my new bag is a bit more spacious while still being comfortable to carry, so that's a plus. Other than that, I don't have much to say, really. So, have a lovely day and see you next update!
2024-04-15 - Three Months Off
So, it's been a while since last update. Unfortunately I don't have much to offer in terms of content, but when it comes to my personal life, quite a few things did happen. However, let's start with things pertaining more to the virtual side of things.
First of all, I have reactivated my Twitter/X account. However, it won't be used for anything personal, just more as a place to get updates regarding anything I'm involved in. So, if you want to be notified when I've updated my website, then you should give it a follow!
As for BMS, I've been chosen to participate in the plugout5 BMS package as a part of the PHASE:SYNDROME pack. My contribution to this package is a Progressive House track called ULTRAVIOLET. Since plugout is a series of BMS packs that focuses on 5 key and 10 key, the chart only has those charts. I do recommend checking out the whole plugout5 pack since there's some really good stuff there!
Oh yeah, I've also added a new subsection to the website: Write-Ups! The reason for is because I was at an arcade with rhythm games in it, and wanted to talk about it here, but the resulting text got a bit too long to be included as a part of the update log, so I've ended up turning it into an article that you can read by clicking here.
Also, I've adjusted the line break height to make things more readable. It's a minor change, but it should make things nicer.
Now, moving onto what has been going on in my life. Well, I've managed to finish a Dutch language course on the A2 level! I'm now waiting to get onto the B1 level course, since I do plan to stay in the Netherlands, and in order to become a citizen and to be able to do pretty much anything here, I do need to know the language well. Still, I'm able of carrying smaller conversations, though there's still a lot of things I have to learn to become a fluent speaker.
Another thing that happened is that I got a cervical disc herniation, seemingly because I slept in some weird position (I tend to tumble around in my sleep, you see). Sounds scary, but it's not as serious as it sounds. It mainly manifests as a nerve pain in my left arm, and has been getting better with time. It also doesn't impede my arm movements, so that's good. Apparently, all you can really do about it is wait, so I'll be doing that.
Now it's time to talk about something really exciting. So, my boyfriend decided to invite a mutual friend of ours for a week, during which we did a bunch of things such as going to restaurants, shopping centers, and we also went to a place with lots of arcade machines! In fact, the place had a collection of rhythm games! Unfortunately, we forgot to bring headphones which definitely hindered the experience (gosh, so noisy!), but overall it was quite a nice experience. As mentioned before, I have written a whole article about my stay there, so make sure to give it a read!
Oh yeah, I'm still playing Deep Rock Galactic, eagerly waiting for the next season (gonna finally be able to get that one Lootbug win animation since they're adding the ability to go through previous seasons). Got all my dwarves promoted to Legendary 2. Rock and Stone!
Well, I guess that's all for now. Until next time! Oh yeah, it was Easter so I should include a pic of me going full bunny mode x3
Anyways, I hope you're having a fantastic day, and see ya until the next update! ^^
2024-01-18 - Happy New Year 24!
So, it's a new year! Unfortunately, my AMIGA is alive the year for me started with getting some kinda virus (not COVID, thankfully) that got me coughing like crazy and unable to sleep. Thankfully, my immune system managed to slay the intruder, so now I'm doing well, though my throat is still a bit sore and I got back pain from a cough that really strained a muscle in my back.
Anyhow, apologies for the lack of updates. Mainly I just spent time playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, which is an amazing remaster (too bad the devs behind the remaster got screwed over because Activision is ran by complete idiots) of 2 games in a series that I hold close to my heart, and RoboQuest, a fun rougelike shooter that a friend of mine recommended. Also, I've been playing a lot of 8 key mode in EZ2ON REBOOT : R and getting pretty good at it. I've also had a very nice Christmas with my boyfriend's family.
So, this update brings four drawings I've made as Christmas gifts for my boyfriend, his parents and my girlfriend. You can see them by going to My Art page or by clicking the preview below. Hopefully you'll enjoy them too! ^^
Ah, so how were the holidays for me? I'd say pretty nice, we went to a nice restaurant just like last year, and also just had a nice time overall. As for gifts, I've got quite a few, such as Miffy/Nijntje pyjamas (don't have a photo of those though, and I'm too shy to show a picture of me wearing those here >.<), a booklet with photos of me and my boyfriend, a glittery cerulean sweater (you can see it in the photo with the 3D-printed bunny), a small 3D-printed bunny toy from my boyfriend, a bunny LEGO set from his mom and a glass art thingy with a silly bunny on it from his dad. You can see them here:
Well, this new year's got a rocky start, but we've still got the whole year to go, so let's make it a good one! Toodles! ^w^