This morning I woke up in my bed at home for the first time in about two months. I still startled awake to the same ringtone - I don't think I'll ever manage to sleep through that one.
Today I felt a lot of feelings that I think I associate specifically with my house. There's a very particular feeling of dread that comes up when I have to leave for somewhere. I have to make sure everything is in order and I start getting ready at the right time, and then there's the awful calculation of how long it'll take to get there and how many delays to take into account.
I think about all the same things when I wake up in my hostel room, but the feeling is very different. I think this is because the room is so small that all of my problems are well in view as soon as I wake up, and the campus is so small that I know exactly how long it'll take to travel across it.
There was one final presentation in the evening today to cap off the semester. It went remarkbly well - I might have more updates on that in future blogs, if I manage to keep a hold of it.
The negative incentives program shined through today as well. There is no chance I would have spent any time studying or playing guitar today if it wasn't for that. I got through another chunk of my digital design textbook, and learned new things this time. I understand the deal with NAND gates now to an extent. Actually - I think I might have known this in the past but it went entirely out of my head in the months it's been.
Getting through the music part was especially difficult. I think I did it in four chunks this time, unable to keep myself playing for longer than 20 minutes at a time. I've been focusing exclusively on learning songs by ear - I go to a random song on Spotify and try to figure it out, though I should almost certainly try to pick a song or two that I'll focus on, for completeness' sake.
Oh, and the cover for Kilby Girl is also coming along. I decoded mostly how the guitars are distributed and mixed together. I was surprised at how involved it is - there's different tones in different ears playing different things that are still complementary. I'm fairly sure they're using multiple types of guitars too. I'm excited to get it done sooner rather than later, and start a streak of uploading covers semi-regularly.
I got through some more Manhwa I'd neglected over the end-semester exams. Eternally Regressing Knight was fun, but Pick Me Up was completely peak (as always!). I'm consistently pleasantly surprised at the high quality writing throughout the story. We're 200 chapters in and I'm excited to keep seeing more, hopefully till the completion, though that's an outlandish wish for novel adaptations.
I was also shown 20 minutes of Dhurandhar 1 by my mom - and ooh boy I have thoughts.
Scene 1 - I can instantly tell that the very first shot has a CGI plane in it. It was subtle, but I thinks humans have some kind of instinct about exactly how the lighting should be that tips us off. Not a great start! The rest of what I watched was also occassionally visually strange. The colours were very obviously dulled by the editing crew - Pakistan isn't a completely colourless country!
The violence was very obviously extended to its limit to provide shock value. This was a consistent theme. Every scene had excessive blood, and they showed bodies getting blown up and amputated in full graphic detail - though again, the explosion looked very CGI artificial and the associated sounds very almost comical.
There were lots of other things I won't even mention so that I can still feel good linking this website to people.
I'll probably watch the rest of it a few minutes at a time, if only to make more fun of it (or maybe it gets really good!)
I had two car rides today but didn't get to try cubing to see if that's a valid way to pass the time travelling. I've been going pretty slow with learning edge algorithms. I find them a lot less ergonomic than corners, even if they're easier to comprehend.
I've found that I struggle with turning properly - fingertricks aren't properly baked into me, and it doesn't help that I watch very few example solves and alg execution videos. I hope this isn't something that holds me back for long, especially not becoming a habit that I have to consciously shake off later on.
I came up with a super funny plan today - I think I will get good official results in every event except 3x3. I'll keep my 50 second PR average, and the rest of the events I'll get high level times in. That would be so so funny. Imagine having a 3bld or OH or 4x4 time faster than 3x3.
I had fun writing this post! It's much longer than I thought it would be. I think I've spent about 40 minutes on it already, and it's nearing my publishing deadline.
I'll try writing long posts like this as often as I can. Developing my writing is one of the most important goals I have, and the negative incentives are really doing the trick here.