Song of the day: The Fratellis - Flathead

So there have been some pretty big changes since my last blog post! I debuted the new redesign, and I'll probably tweak it slightly in the coming days. I've also started to design a new button design to go with my new aesthetic. There are also a few quirks in the French section that I need to fix, and I honestly should generally work more on that section.

Anyways, last night and today I've painted my nails for the first time in a while. I almost messed it up quite a bit, but I somehow saved it. Anyways, this morning, the channel I've been watching the Facts of Life on aired The Facts of Life Goes to Paris. Or rather, most of it. When they rerun it, they apparently air it as four 30-minute episodes instead of one 2-hour TV movie, and they aired the first part last afternoon. I thought that I had recorded it, but I guess I didn't. However, I was still able to pick up most of the plot, and it was really great! That guy that Jo dated was like, so amazing, so now I've started to yearn again. What joy.

Also, today, I found out that it's harder than you might think to scoop ice cream with a cookie scooper. But yeah, I'm gonna stop rambling now, so I'll talk to you all later. Bye!

Song of the day: Britney Spears - Overprotected

So recently, I've been working behind the scenes on a potential redesign of this site. It has a space/star background, and an 80s-inspired logo, and a slightly different colour scheme for links and stuff. Right below is an image with a comparison between my current design on the left and my potential redesign on the right.

So yeah, tell me which one you prefer on my Neocities profile.

But yeah, other than that, my life has been carrying on like before, for the most part. However, I'm pretty annoyed atm because I noticed that the Facts of Life reruns that I've watching a) are only on Monday through Thursday and b) have quite a few bits cut out, as well as the theme song sped up in some instances to make room for more annoying adverts. Why must the Logo channel do this?!?

Also, it's been raining super hard recently where I live. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that this is the most rain that I've seen in a 36-hour period in my whole life, and there's been over ten cm since last evening. Plus, (much to my delight) it's supposed to be rainy until at least Thursday, though I hope it calms down somewhat. Below I have a bit of footage that I took of the rain, so you all can see just how hard it's been raining.

By the way, I've been uploading some short clips of cool things that I see on my YouTube channel, so if that sounds cool to you, then go check that out!

But yeah, that's pretty much all that I have to say, so I'll talk to you later. Bye!

Song of the day: Lightsum - Vanilla

Hey, I'm back! So quite a few things have happened recently. First off, I've been watching more Facts of Life, and apparently it's on weekdays from 11 AM to around 4 PM, so that's around 10 episodes a day! Anyways, I really love the show and I love laying on the couch and watching it. Also, because of The Facts of Life, I've started to love 80s/90s design, and I kinda like the vapourwave aesthetic. I may well redesign the site around that in the future, but I'd have to do a lot of experimenting first, so I don't eff it up. But I did manage to make an 80s-inspired logo for this site, however, which you might find around the site soon.

Also, I've been considering being a Vtuber after one of my favourite YouTubers, Wolfychu, made a livetreaming Vtuber channel where she makes gaming videos, and I kinda wanna do the same. If you don't know what a Vtuber is, it's a YouTuber or Twitch streamer who, instead of using their face, use 2D or 3D characters, which are normally anime-inspired.

Other than that, my grandparents stopped by today as my grandpa had a doctor's appointment in the city I live in, and we watched some Facts of Life, and my grandma gave me $20. It was the first time that I'd seen them in quite a while, so it was pretty fun!

But yeah, that's pretty much all, and I'm gonna go now. Bye!

Song of the day: IU - Good Day

So I've been playing some more Pokemon Pearl recently, and it's been going great! I do wish that I had an Eevee though, as it's my favourite Pokemon. Speaking of Pokemon, my Pokemon page is also going great! I think I'll work a bit more on it today and/or tomorrow and then publish it!

Also, I've just generally had a super week! A few days ago, I turned on the TV and found out that some channel had Gilmore Girls, and then like three or so hours of Facts of Life, two of my favourite shows! Just sitting on the couch and watching my favourite shows is so amazing. It's like how you're more excited when you hear your favourite song on the radio than when you play it on your iPod, seeing on the channel list thingy that your favourite show is playing is super cool! I also watched Gilmore Girls while eating some cookies and cream ice cream the other day, and it was so cool!

But probably the most magical moment I've experienced recently was last night. A classmate invited my whole grade (there are less than 20 of us total) to his house for his birthday party (don't worry, we're all vaccinated) and I hung out with my usual group of friends/frenemies (I forgot how I've been referring to them on this blog) the whole night. The whole affair was fun, but probably my favourite moment of the night was at around 9 o'clock.

It was already dark outside, and cloudy. It wasn't rainy, but if you looked at the sky, you could see soft lightning. We couldn't see the lightning itself, just the surrounding white flash. We could only see the edge of the flash, so it wasn't super bright. The air was nice and cool, and some of us, my frenemies and I included, decided to go out to the backyard to watch it. We lay on the grass for a couple of minutes, and it was super amazing. There was a soft breeze that gently brushed across my face, and watching the soft lightning gently flicker was so cool. I was listening to the song Breathe by Faith Hill at the time, which was a super fitting song for some reason.

I also got some cookie cake (I love cookie cake so much!) to go, on top of the slices I ate whilst I was there. Overall, I've had a super cool time this past week, here's to another great week!

Song of the day: When You're Looking Like That by Westlife

So Pokemon Pearl is going well so far! Other than that, as is customary for summer, especially where I live, it's been near-unbearably hot recently. Even though it's night now and it's supposed to be cool, it's still TWENTY-SEVEN DEGREES CELSIUS. And it's supposed to be in the high thirties this week! Why can't it be like fifteen degrees cooler? Anyways, I also found a video recently that was posted a few years ago on YouTube called "Spaghetti Again".

Anyways, I just wanted to share that with you. Other than that, it's been pretty ho-hum these past few days, you know, same ol', same ol'. I have started playing Pokemon Go, though, and the other day (I think, time's been blurry because pandemic) I took a walk around my neighbourhood playing the game, and ending up walking around 4km or so, I believe, which is more than I've walked at once in quite a while, and coupled with the unbearable heat, it certainly made for a pleasant afternoon. But thankfully, this Monday, there's a silver lining to the hot, muggy cloud: the high is going to be 28 degrees. And better yet, it's supposed to rain! FINALLY! But anyways, I got to go, so talk to you all alter!

So this is gonna be a quick, short entry but quite a bit has happened in the last few days. Firstly, I beat Pokemon SoulSilver yesterday and started playing Pokemon Pearl! I've also started working on a Pokemon page for this site, where I'll talk about my favourite Pokemon and stuff like that as well as my teams in each of the games I've played, so be looking out for that soon!

Speaking of Pokemon, I've also downloaded Pokemon Go and played it quite a lot the past few days. I was four or five years behind the trend, but what can I say? That's the way I roll! But anyways, it's actually got me out of the house for once! Today and yesterday, I went on walks around my neighbourhood to catch Pokemon, and my favourite Pokemon I've got on one of these walks so far is a Torchic that I got yesterday, which was my Pokemon Emerald started as well as probably my favourite starter overall. I especially walked a lot today (about 4km, I think!), and even got a Charizard!

Also, yesterday, I had to go to a family gathering at my grandparents' place, which involved me slipping downstairs and watching TV for a bit, and facepalming at some game show contestant who got some simple questions wrong, as well as the time my little cousin claimed that the Bible is about concrete. So overall, quite an interesting visit. But yeah, I'll talk to y'all later, bye!

So a lot has happened since last time! Today and yesterday, I've been working on a page about iPods (which y'all decided that I should do before a Pokemon page over on my Neocities profile), and I just published the iPod page! It's over in the sidebar, and I'll link it right here as well. You all should go check it out!

So in other news, I've been playing a ton of Pokemon SoulSilver the past couple of days. I started my playthrough back in 2019 and I've been playing it on and off since. I've reached Indigo Plateau and I'm about to challenge the Elite Four, but I decided to go back to Victory Road and the area around Blackthorn to train up my Pokemon first. I also have an Onix, which has the lowest HP and other stats (I think) out of all my Pokemon despite being higher levels than the rest of them, so I'm kinda nervous about that. However, I do have a Lugia and a Gyrados, which are both pretty powerful, so that makes me feel much less nervous.

Also, I've just generally been having a pretty cool day so far today! My family and I had stuffed crust pizza from Papa John's tonight, which was great! It was the first time (at least in many years) that I've had stuffed crust pizza, and overall it was 10/10. But yeah, in conclusion, this has been a cool time, here's to more cool times and to me beating the Elite Four and the Champion soon in Pokemon SoulSilver! See you all later!

It's WWDC day! I'd kinda like to live-blog this or something, but I don't really know how I could do that, so I guess I'll just go over the big new features and my thoughts on them.

iOS

• For FaceTime, they added a Zoom-like grid view, as well as links and schedules for FaceTime calls that work across Apple and non-Apple forms. The new stuff this year is basically just putting FaceTime on equal feature standing with Zoom, but nonetheless, it's a pretty welcome update. In terms of Messages, there was basically just updates to how non-message things shared with you. There was a lot of hype before the keynote, so I was expecting more, but I guess it's ok. I really wish you could customize your away message though!
• There's a new song feature thingy with different photos to the rhythm of the song, but I wonder if it'll just work with Apple Music or if it will work with music downloaded from the iTunes Store or other sources, as I don't personally have any music subscription services. Safari on iOS now has a redesigned tab bar, and extensions.
• You can now add other types of cards, especially IDs, to the Wallet app. Maybe I'll finally use it! Honestly, this is super helpful so you wouldn't have to shuffle around in a physical wallet anymore, but I wish that they could add more types of cards and bring this to more areas. Maps has lots of new features, such as more specifically accurate maps, helping users find transit, etc. I wonder if people will start using it instead of Google Maps now...

iPadOS

• To start off: basically, they brought all the home screen improvements that iPhones and iPod touches got last year to iPads this year. It's nice to see that they're adding some sort of multiple window thing to iPads. However, I personally think that Mac multitasking is quite a bit better and easier, at least for me personally. For Notes, there are also Quick Notes, which are pretty much what they say on the tin. I also love the Google Docs-like revision history and the mentions on shared notes, which could be super useful. They also finally added tags, which is something I never knew I needed!
• In Translate, there's a feature that detects when you're speaking in different languages and auto-translates, which is super cool! You canalso now build iOS and iPadOS apps on your iPad in Swift and submit them to the App Store there, which is probably gonna be good for developers who don't have computers.

macOS Monterey

• In the new macOS, named macOS Monterey, they've finally added the shortcuts app to the Mac! You can also share your cursor between your Macs and your iPad, and drag and drop files between them. Finally, the Safari toolbar has been reimagined, and the toolbar and tab bar have been combined, making a much more compact experience. The tab bar also changes colour for some reason, and there are tab groups now, which sync between your different devices. There's also some new stuff for developers, which basically just makes everything easier from what I can see.

watchOS

• You can now reflect to stay mindful, and I know some people who would love this! There are also some more Fitness+ workouts, and other ways to stay fit. Finally, there's now a watch face that lets you see portraits of people.

Some other big features that I haven't mentioned

• You can now stop emails and other apps from tracking to you, and see third-party domains that apps are connecting to, which is great to make sure that apps aren't doing bad stuff.
• Siri finally has on-device processing, which (I'm pretty sure) means that after TEN YEARS, Siri can FINALLY do stuff off-line! Woot woot! You can also use Siri on other things around your house, like thermostats and stuff.
• There's some more privacy features for iCloud this year. There's also an option to hide your email and make different email addresses that forward to your main iCloud email but aren't connected to you.

So yeah, all in all, this year is pretty small for macOS and watchOS, but the new iOS and iPadOS seem to be more major. All in all, though some things were kinda disappointing, there were a ton of cool features this year! I've been waiting for this for a bit, so it's pretty exciting to actually see it. But that's all from me for now, so I'll talk to you all later!

So the past day has been super fun! Last night, I went to the lake thing, and it was super fun! The lake was super pretty and all the food was super delicious. ^-^

I also helped my mother with a library book sale this morning. She helps an organization that works with the local library to sell off discards and donations that the library doesn't want, and so I helped her with the socially distanced sales that they've been doing instead of their normal ones by collecting the money.

Right after that, we scrambled over to the mall and I got my second dose of the COVID vaccine! The mall has been opening at 11, with many stores opening at noon. We got there a bit before 10 o'clock, and so the only stores open were one or two of the big ones, and a lot of the lights were still off, so it had a cool, slightly creepy feeling to it. As we entered the mall, the song Night Changes by One Direction was playing as well, which kind of amplified that feeling for some reason. It honestly kinda reminded me of those YouTube videos where you're supposed to pretend you're in an empty mall in the 80s with ABBA or something playing quietly and echo-y in the background.

I also saw one person who used to go to my school in the vaccination clinic, though I didn't speak with her, and I saw another one, who went to the get-together last night as well, in the queue as we were leaving. I ended up also getting McDonald's for lunch, so all in all today has been a pretty cool day so far! But for now, I'm going to sign off, so I'll talk to you all later!

Sorry that it's been a few days, but I'm back!

So I haven't really been doing much the past few days because I've spent most of my time lounging around, lost in my thought. I don't wanna get into it too much because it's been kind of a bummer, but I've basically just been questioning my identity and that kind of stuff, which has been quite uncool, if I do say so myself. So yeah, I've basically just been sitting around. But what else can you expect? It's summer holiday! So other than that, I've spent a lot of my time daydreaming and that kind of stuff.

But yeah, other than that, I'm going to the end-of-year get-together than I think I mentioned in a blog post last week tomorrow. I'm somewhat excited about that, so I'll update you all on how that goes afterwards, maybe tomorrow or the day after.

In other news, I've developed a crush on Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys for some unknown reason. I've also slowly become a fan of Westlife, an Irish boyband who are pure legends. And to complete the weird trifecta of new things I like, in addition to my usual nostalgia/"slight" obsession with the late 90s and early 2000s, I suddenly kinda wanna go back to 2012/early 2013 and the days of iOS 6 and all that. I think that that may be because I'm a fan of iJustine, and I've been watching some of her videos from the late 2000s and early 2010s recently, and also because 2012 and 2013 are two of the first years that I can remember pretty clearly, so I have an extra sprinkling of personal nostalgia for that.

But yeah, I'm getting rather tired and I'm pretty much out of stuff to talk about, so let's hope the next few days are better, and I'll talk to you all later. Bye!