23 May 2025

Weeknotes 32

Table of Contents
    • A Summer Retrospective by Gracia Ventus in The Rosenrot — a beautiful outfit log!! I spent ages scrolling through her instagram and admiring her style, and now feel like I need to reinvent my wardrobe!!
    • Internet Phone Book by Kristoffer Tjalve and Elliott Cost — now, sadly, sold out online, but a very charming project. I am in there! (Here’s a photo by veronique.)
    • I was on Manu Moreale’s People & Blogs the other week, where I talk about my website and blog and things :-)
    View of a street corner from a cafe patio, where I’ve got an iced matcha and a sketchbook.
    Ink sketch of the street corner.

    Media Diary

    Listening to: nostalgia

    I went to see Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert which was nostalgic and wonderful.

    Playing: A bit

    I haven’t been gaming much! (What have I been doing?? god I don’t even know)

    I haven’t played Blue Prince in a couple of weeks now, partly because each session often ends up quite long and you can’t save and quit partway through a run.

    I played a bit of Destiny last week—I farmed the Insight Terminus GM (a classic) in pursuit of a super cool void rocket sidearm; the Rite of the Nine is pretty cool in my extremely limited experience with it—Spire is infinitely more doable when there are little indicators telling you where the next node is.

    I’m cautiously optimistic about the upcoming expansion.

    Watching: Nothing new

    I’m not watching much!

    Well. Last weekend I watched the third period of game 7 of the Toronto Maple Leafs vs Florida Panthers, which was just a concentrated dose of depression. (Leafs lost 1-6).

    Reading: DC

    I subscribed to DC Universe Infinite, DC Comics’ online comic subscription service. It’s kind of bizarre—you can only read via their iOS or Android app, because for some reason the web version is only available to US subscribers (what?), because we live in the medieval times, or something. I read on my iPad, which is a wonderful screen, but I wish I had the option to also read on desktop.

    But! It’s better than me trying to borrow five million different issues or trade paperbacks or whatever from the library. Trying to read mainstream superhero comics is like the least user-friendly thing in the world.

    Anyway, some highlights:

    • Nightwing by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo (#78–118) — the art for this run is FANTASTIC. Bruno Redondo does such cool stuff with showing how Nightwing moves around.
    Two-page comic spread of a street, where Dick Grayson is drawn a dozen times across the panel, running down the street and up a fire escape, changing into his Nightwing costume.
    The famous Nightwing #87 — Bruno Redondo does this thing where he draws Nightwing multiple times in a single panel, which I just think is so cool. Comics, baby!!!
    • Robin by Joshua Williamson and Gleb Melnikov (#1–12) — featuring Damian Wayne in the League of Lazarus tournament, where he (fake) kills people and makes friends and reads shoujo manga. It’s cute!
    • Absolute Batman by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta — I only read the first couple of issues because that’s all that was available on my subscription, but I liked it. The art is really nice and it’s an interesting take on Batman, albeit quite violent.
    • Tim Drake: Robin by Meghan Fitzmartin and Riley Rossmo — I’m kind of whatever about the plot here but am totally charmed by the art, which is very opinionated and stylized. Funnily enough, it seems that a lot of people hate the art, as well as the characterizations; I can’t really comment on the latter since I haven’t read Tim’s other runs yet—namely, Red Robin—mostly because I’m not fond of that artwork, lol.
    Comic page of Robin and Nightwing swinging through the city. Their figures and faces are quite stylized.
    From Tim Drake: Robin. I looove how Riley Rossmo draws such dynamic movement.

    Desk

    I bought a new desk!

    I’d been using the same cheap IKEA desk since literally high school, and despite spending the vast majority of my time sitting there, I never upgraded it until now. That desk is old enough to vote!!

    Anyway, I now am the owner of a nice standing desk, which will surely fix all of my problems. I also upgraded my vertical monitor to a 4K monitor, so I can beam even more pixels into my eyes.

    My desk, with two monitors, a small PC, docked laptop, split keyboard, and a smattering of items scattered around, amid various cables.
    Closeup of my white split keyboard with white, red and blue keycaps.

    Product list, for the nerds:

    • Desk: Progressive Desk Solo Ryzer (tabletop: 60"×30" / 152.4cm × 76.2cm).
      • I picked this because 1) it’s local; 2) people said good things about its customer service; and 3) it didn’t have horrific reviews on Reddit. So many standing desk brands would look beautiful and cool on Instagram and then I would go on Reddit and all the comments were like ‘do NOT buy from this company, it arrived damaged and their CS is a trashfire.’
      • Deskmat: Two-Sided Vegan Leather Desk Mat, which I got along with my desk order as part of a promotion
    • PC: I’ve written about the whole build and specs here; the case is a cute lil NR200P!
    • Laptop: MacBook Air M2
      • Laptop stand: Twelve South BookArc
    • Monitors: two LG 27" 4K monitors (27UP650-W)
      • Wallpaper: it’s a Destiny 2 wallpaper that Bungie shared; I’ve sadly lost the link to it.
    • Keyboard: Ergodox EZ with KAT Drifter keycaps. Here’s the layout.
    • Mouse: Logitech Lift; for gaming I use a wired Logitech G203, which I’ve shoved behind the vertical monitor.
    • Headphones: Massdrop × Sennheiser HD 6XX Headphones. I’ve also stuck this behind my vertical monitor.
    • Mic: Blue Yeti; it’s mounted to the left side of my desk.

    Behind my laptop, I’ve hidden my USB switcher, which I use to toggle my peripheral inputs between PC and Mac. I’m still missing my PC speakers (cheap, crappy) and webcam (seldom used).

    Closeup of keyboard (left side). The keycaps have white alphas, and red and blue mods. The legends are symbols rather than actual Latin characters.
    Close up of right side of keyboard.

    So, something fun I realized is that I can now lower my desk down enough to sit at a height where my feet touch the floor, which I couldn’t do with my old IKEA desk. The less fun part is that I won’t be able to put an IKEA Alex drawer underneath as a result, lol.

    Etc.

    RIP Pocket and Glitch.