State of the Anime is something I want to try out every month where I do a quick overview of anime, manga and other things I'm watching or interested in. These are in no particular order, I just kind of jot down notes as I go.
Without further ado, let's get started.
For all of the fun memories that I made with random people on this game. Although it is unfortunate to see this game go so soon, I hope everyone who has given this game a shot had fun along the way.
Although MS2 only lasted for just under two years and being active mostly only during the beginning beta till about a few months in, I had great fun playing with everyone I met. From visiting player houses to mini-games and finding music to play with friends to tedious hours of grinding for crystals, it was a fun while it lasted and I don't regret picking this game up.
I used to have a small blog I was maintaining back a few years ago but then I stopped updating it and eventually I might have accidentally emptied out the database at one point and lost the desire to rebuild it. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure I've lost the source code for it not too long afterwards.
A bit more on the technical side. I used to be a programmer primarily doing freelance work writing in PHP but those days are long gone now. As time went on, I swapped over to JavaScript sometime around 2018 or early 2019 or so and haven't gone back since.
I was originally planning on creating a new blog platform from scratch, but then I ran into some hurdles parsing my own flavor of Markdown text and ended up choosing the first NodeJS-based blog platform that I thought looked good. Fast-forward a few more days later and now I have a Hexo instance up and running. Thanks to the numerous plugins, extensions and themes available in Hexo, I've settled on the hexo-theme-stun theme with some minor tweaks.
Someone suggested I make churros and I figured, why not try making some baked churros. I know, it kind of sounds weird but surprisingly it was... okay.
I'd argue the hardest part was probably the fact that I didn't have a proper piping bag for this in order to get the ridged texture. The cut-a-Ziploc-bag technique was okay, though they ended up becoming more like mini logs.
Since this was still relatively fresh on my mind, why don't I talk about the first time I visited New York to meet a friend of mine?
I was a bit anxious at this point to be completely honest. Two things were at play here. I've been to places with family, I've been to places with friends, and I've been to places with teams I've been on, but I haven't really done too much traveling solo. It was the first time I'd ride an airplane by myself to a place I've only heard about and never been in. Not only that, but I was meeting someone for the first time (in person). Granted, I've known them, who I'll call Usagi from here on out, for a very long while already but something about actually meeting someone beyond the screen gave me butterflies in my stomach.
Regardless, I couldn't stop there. I've already spent the last few weeks debating on what to do, where to go, and what things to maybe talk about. We even ended up with a plan to schedule out our little day together (which I thank them for planning a whole lot).
Here are some pictures taken from stuff I've made a long long time ago. Enjoy!
I swear, I still haven't taken a cookie photo that looked like this ever since I took this photo back in 2014. Taken with a Nikon D50 I bought used off eBay a long time ago.
So fast forward a year after my Elias cosplay and we get to AMid 2019.
You would think that I've learned my lesson about bulky cosplay but nope. This time, it was Goblin Slayer.
Okay, I think it was because it's a full-mask cosplay that motivated me to cosplay as him this time around. As I've mentioned earlier, I'm kinda shy so being able to cosplay while hiding my face was a total no-brainer for me.
Heya, I'm back again. This time it's Goblin Slayer from... Goblin Slayer.
After doing the Elias Cosplay last year, I felt a bit more prepared this time. As you can probably imagine, the iconic part of this cosplay is yet again, a helmet. With my trusty 3D printer in hand as well as a model that I found online, I got to work on printing out the helmet piece by piece.
For some reason, I was having a hard time getting the first layer to print nicely so a few of the prints ended up being failures but I had no choice but to push through. My brother was inviting a few other people to come with us and they were planning on dressing up so I couldn't back down now.
One day, I look at my phone and get a package status update that my package was out for delivery. Not too long later, I get a random text from my brother saying that I got a package. Hmm, I didn't order anything... so I wonder what it could be.
Fast forward a few hours later and to my surprise it's not just one package but a whole bunch of other smaller packages inside of it too.
Okay, it's the middle of May so it's definitely not Christmas yet.
I end up being instructed to look at the card first and eventually everything was sequenced out, and boy was I surprised.
