Blog Post #14: Aye Laddy

W. 1/29/2025

I am a bit behind. 

I forgot that there was no Seminar today— and, thus, no presentation— which was very welcome, because I have not made any progress with Seminar project work. 

I turned in my fisherman wizard cloak Texturing assignment tonight (after finishing it tonight), two days late. 

It doesn’t look as 3D as I would’ve liked, but I think it’s passable. 

What is the name of the fisherman wizard?

And tomorrow, I have Procedural Art, and I haven’t gotten any work done for that assignment, either. Fortunately, there’s a week-grace period— and we’ll be working on the assignment in class. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to do it fully then. But I will, doubtless, need help; I’m working on fixing my sleep schedule by getting up early (almost) every day, but I still can’t fall asleep until like 3 or 4am every night, so I’ve been operating on 4-ish hours of sleep each night for the past two-ish weeks. As a result, I was so out of it last Procedural class that I was unable to both retain information and was unable to take notes. Not a great combo.

Why am I behind?

Personal reasons. I won’t get into it. 

It’s 8:43pm currently. I just spent 20 minutes working on my Udemy blueprints course. I’m almost done with the Jetpack Platforming project. (I can’t wait to move on.) But, since I hadn’t done any blueprints for weeks, I feel that I will need to re-dedicate my brain towards that workflow. Like when you’re learning a new language, and you immerse yourself in it for a bit, and, gradually, you begin to see your life through the lens of that language. I’ve fallen out of immersion in blueprints. But I’ll need to get back into it, regardless, because I do have a presentation next week, and I’d love to at least have finished the sidescrolling dungeon crawler project. 

And I still need to contact Student Housing and look into funding for the summer. But, alas, it is almost 9pm, and part of my new system is “no screen time at least an hour before bedtime” (which is 10pm). I don’t even really have anything else to report today, so that’s fine. 

I’ll check back in tomorrow. 

Th. 1/30/2025

I did, indeed, make some progress in Procedural Modeling today. We went over what swirly dregs of memory that cascaded through this swiss cheese brain— refreshing and re-allowing the opportunity for a better today to learn, and take notes. And I made some progress on my Industrial Table assignment. I hadn’t started it before class today. Here, let me get a screenshot, please hold. 

Yeah, so, it has these broad metal bases, supporting a crank-of-sorts that can elevate the surface. And, as a graduate student, the additional assignment requirement is to make it have parameters to extend the tabletop, and reposition the legs to match. But I feel pretty confident. My sleep was a bit better last night. My brain is now merely a feta cheese— no longer swiss. 
—

I’ve been doing calisthenics in the hallway outside my bedroom. Yesterday and today. Pushups, planks, handstands, elevated-via-chair/windowsill dips, single-leg squats on the same windowsill. It feels good. And it’s good for me. Oft, it is challenging to muster the effort to change my clothes, go out into the sub-freezing weather, and walk to the gym. So I’m glad that I can get some exercise in at home. 

—

I worked on my Blueprints course again tonight. I made minimal progress. The loss-of-immersion has really blown holes through my ability to keep up with the modules— so I got through only a 26 and a 17 minute video. It took an hour. Which, I guess, is better than what I expected— I expected it to take twice as long as the videos. But I had to rewind and pause, peering mole-like at my phone to attempt to discern the nodes on the tiny screen.

I think, en futur, I will connect my laptop to my other monitor, and have the Unreal project on my laptop, with the monitor showing the videos. I hope that my computer can handle that. It would certainly be helpful. I’m just used to working at the table in the hall, and I can’t reasonably lug my monitor out here. 

Anyways! It’s 8:23pm, so I really should finish this up and get off my screens. I don’t have class tomorrow, so I’m going to get up early, and do, like, 3 hours (?) of blueprints modules earlier in the day. I have plans in the evening, so I mustn’t leave it late, as I have been. And then it’s the weekend— with more of the same. 

F. 1/31/2025

Wednesday, during Studio, Seth ordered us pizza. So, before, I called the shop and asked about vegan options— in a pack-a-day New Yorker accent. The shop was called Antonio’s.

“Hey Antonio! I presume! Ya got vegan options?”

People I tell about it don’t believe me, but, fortunately, Seth lives in my building, so he can corroborate. 

I also got the role of Macbeth for our studio project. It’s a Shakespeare fighting game, so there aren’t a lot of lines, but I’m still super psyched. When I was driving to Target yesterday, I was practicing my Hamlet voice. It became more and more gruff and Scottish as I drove— which is a good thing. 

When I was in high school, I would practice my voices driving to and from school. At one point, I started recording a voice memo at the beginning of each trip, and I could listen back— to improve my vocal work, but also just to smile. It was during that time period that I developed my Southern Kermit voice, which became the voice of the garden gnomish-version of HalfCakes— my first ever character, and what my social accounts are referencing. To clarify, I don’t mean “my first ever D&D character”, I mean “the first original character that I drew as a child”.