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!
So sorry if this is random and short, but MINCHAN'S BACK!
For those of you who are unaware of this whole situation, go check out my Verivery page and my page on Minchan! Minchan's been on hiatus since October due to health issues, but he's back and Verivery can finally perform and do everything with seven members again starting tomorrow!
But yeah, other than that, I've basically been mucking around today (it's a holiday, so my dad is home and I can't film). I've written a bit, but I'm still recovering from finals, so my writing skills and stuff will probably be a bit meh for a while. But yeah, other than that, I don't have much else to update you all on, so I'll talk to you all later!
So in my unending pit of nostalgia, the past couple of days I redownloaded some Angry Birds games from the App Store. (Side note, I think it's stupid that they removed the older Angry Birds games like the OG one, Angry Birds Space, etc, from the App Store, but thankfully I downloaded them before they got removed.) But anyways, the OG Angry Birds is pretty fun but I love Angry Birds Space. I never remembered it being this fun when I played it when I was younger! I love that you can skip between the different worlds as you like instead of having to go through them linearly, plus the whole aesthetic is so cool!
Also, I've been considering putting a writing section on my site for some short stories and stuff. I've seen a few other sites on Neocities that do that and it's super cool! However, I'd need to write short stories first, considering that most of my writing, at least the recent stuff that's palatable, is a bit of a longer form. But yeah, you might be looking out for that soon, I guess!
Another thing to be looking out for is my vlogs! (I know, great segue.) Last night, I edited the two episodes that I filmed the other day, and though they're different for what I have planned for the rest of the first "season" of episodes (my first stockpile), they're still pretty interesting in my opinion. I might film another episode or two today, but I'm planning to do quite a bit of filming on the weekdays of this next week. Other than writing, working on this site and creating the vlogs, I've also had some time to read finally! I've been able to make some decent progress on the book I'm currently reading, which has been really great. I also got some more Sarah Dessen books from the library, so I'm going to read those once I'm finished with the book I'm reading atm.
But yeah, that's pretty much it! (Summer this year is obv pretty uneventful so far) I'll talk to you all soon!
School's out for summer! So yesterday, I got out of school. Yesterday was also field day, but thankfully it was rainy so we did it indoors. Double win! And we only had to do a marginal amount of sports, which amounted to dodgeball, which I barely participated in. We also had an activity where my grade went to the cafeteria and the teachers or whoever showed one of those weird 7 Second Riddles videos about crime scene cases. Thanks to my marginal crime-solving skills from watching Murder, She Wrote (and the fact that the teachers made us fill out a multiple choice form) I only got two wrong out of like 20.
But the highlight of the morning, by far, was the half-hour, and later another hour or so where me and my frenemy group played Apples to Apples. My personal best play was when I won the card "rubbery" by saying "The NRA". I also liked the (somewhat bittersweet) part where my frenemies and I went around to get our favourite teachers who won't return next year to sign our yearbooks. This included probably one of my favourite teachers of all time, my old English teacher who inspired me to get into writing, so that was particularly sad for me. But thankfully, though, my Latin teacher gave us some leftover worm-on-a-strings which had been hanging in her room, and I walked awat with two because one frenemy didn't want his, so I took it in. (My first one is named Lizzie, and the other is Charlotte, in case you were wondering, both after Pride and Prejudice.)
My mother and I also took a trip to Target yesterday because I had to buy some new clothes for a get-together an acquaintance of mine is hosting (that was going to be today but was moved right around the time my mother and I got home from Target). But long story short, I insisted on browsing through Target, sidetracking our mission, and found a Britney Spears t-shirt!
So yeah, for that alone, I'd consider the trip a success. Today was my first full day of summer holiday, and I've mostly been relaxing. I finally got some time to write again after not writing for over a week, so that was very welcome! I also finished filming for two new vlog episodes (I'm stockpiling episodes before I start uploading them, I'll tell you all when I do upload them), and I'm going to try and edit them tomorrow. I also had the immense satisfaction of sleeping in until 8:30 (!), something I've been unaccustomed to for quite a few months. I also somehow kept all my A'/raised my B's to A's! So yeah, it's been a pretty great two days. Here's to an even awesomer summer holiday!
