Kara Valentine

Oh god I broke things. The first time I update this blog in months and I break all of the images, somehow. Nice one, Kara.

Kara Valentine

I was in a weird whimsical mood, so I went back and reinstalled Dustforce for the first time in years. I played that game a whole ton, years back, and in that time I made a bunch of levels with the map maker.

I downloaded them all and went through each one. After having SS-ranked each one, I can’t help but dwell on who I was then, who I am now, and who I will be in the distant future.

I met so many people playing Dustforce, and I have no idea where they are now. I used to be really good at it, and I still am reasonably good at it… it’s odd to think how much it shaped me.

Kara Valentine

My Road to 70 buff in FFXIV just ran out. It lasts for 90 days after you join the game on a preferred server, and adds +100% experience (not doubles; that’s an important distinction) to your gains for those 90 days.

This is what I’ve managed to accomplish in that time, strictly in terms of levelling. Not bad, all things considered. I’d have hoped to get them all to 70, but I suppose I didn’t quite go hard enough at levelling to accomplish that.

Kara Valentine

Doing some fiddly stuff with Netlify to make sure I can get this site building. This micropost will be edited to trigger builds (and hopefully deploys) - stay tuned.

Kara Valentine

After having finished Stormblood’s storyline, I’ve been taking a break from story stuff, and instead working on some quality of life things. Specifically I’ve been levelling my gathering and crafting classes!

All of my gatherers are at Lv70, and four of my eight crafters are at Lv70. I wanted to get all gatherers and crafters to 70 fairly soon, as it’ll make a lot of future stuff easier when I have to start repairing or melding with higher-level gear.

Kara Valentine

Just finished Stormblood. What an absolute time.

I’ve enjoyed every single moment of my time with FFXIV’s story thus far, even the more mundane parts, and Stormblood was no exception. It took the story in places I was really eager to see it go, it did a bunch of cool world-building and character development, the themes it discussed were handled with maturity and grace…

Such a good expansion. Everyone says Shadowbringers is the best thus far; I’m expecting it to blow me away just as much as the whole game has already… once I get to it!

Kara Valentine

Let Paul Blart Say “Fuck”

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”…to kick off the new year, here’s ‘Despacito’, by Wonderwall!"

Kara Valentine

“…distant times call for vacant measures…”

“…a void in the hand is worth two in the void…”

“…a jack of all shades is a master of sun…”

Please Like And Subscribe For More Badages

Kara Valentine

Just once it would be awesome to not have to deal with caveats.

Kara Valentine

Increasingly feeling like my best is, and perhaps never was, enough.

Kara Valentine

Even the sharpest, most broken pieces of glass will shine from the right angle.

Kara Valentine

they added 31

new

spells

to blue mage in FFXIV.

GOODBYE EVERYONE, SEE YOU IN A YEAR LOL

Kara Valentine

I’m real sad about SoundCloud going kaput. It’s had its share of issues, but there was a really cool group of people that brought their wacky, quirky talents and made cool music for all of us to enjoy.

The new rules for free accounts has all but killed the scenes I’m talking about. A bunch of creators have already left.

This is hitting me hard, harder than I expected.

Kara Valentine

I’m still alive. Not a whole lot has been happening. I’m going to visit my parents over the holiday break, in a bit less than a month.

Otherwise work has been work, and I guess everything else has been roughly normal.

Kara Valentine

Zelda II’s a really good game.

It’s weird how such an underrated, janky game has resonated with me the way it has.

Kara Valentine

One burden removed. Feels lighter without all that extra weight attached.

Be mindful of the company you keep, folks.

Kara Valentine

Oof, GDScript is appallingly bad when it comes to collection manipulation. Coming from Scala, it’s like trying to perform basic operations (like mapping!!) while blindfolded and handcuffed.

How the heck does it not have mapping yet?

Kara Valentine

This week has been really good. For the first time in a long while, I feel at peace, as if I can breathe and not worry about the state of things.

It goes to show that attitudes can do a lot towards enacting change (given means and ability, ofc).

Kara Valentine

I’ve been told I’m an observant person. That’s true in some ways and definitely not in others. I’m usually pretty good at spotting minor details about things. I’m sometimes, but not always, bad at observing some aspects of interpersonal interactions.

I’ve gotten to the point with social observations that I’m able to read something, then iterate on my related assumptions and beliefs, until I arrive on what resembles a reasonable stance on things. This is a good place to be.

Unfortunately this can suck when I begin with a negative hypothesis (“this person doesn’t like X”), and after sufficient observation, I prove myself right (or right enough). It’s not a fun time to be right about things being wrong.

Kara Valentine

Feeling a bit aimless.

Kara Valentine

It’s interesting how the act of sharing a thought sometimes has a way of distorting it. The act of sharing, as in the kind you do on social media, has some curious connotations.

Thinking about how a thought’s merit shifts based on its audience and exposure is super weird. Little things like a thought such as “I think a lot of this subreddit’s content is knee-jerk reactionary” takes on a completely different tone if you were to post that to the subreddit in question.

Kara Valentine

Two things:

Kara Valentine

“My emotions run higher than usual. There are things I’ll never understand, and those things will always be precious, but just now I am closer to them."

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Today was a mistake.

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What in the heck

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Just got off the phone with my ISP. I came home to significantly slower speeds from my router. The usual debugging rituals didn’t help, and the call revealed there’s issues on the line.

I really cannot wait to move out.

Kara Valentine

On a bus home from the airport. The interstate trip was really good, much needed.

I’m very tired now though. Tomorrow looks like it’ll be challenging, energy-wise.

Kara Valentine

Live, breathe, exist and appreciate.

Kara Valentine

Feeling pretty fragile and hollow atm. Applying for apartments is tiring. My energy levels are really low, and I haven’t been sleeping well.

I’m going on a short holiday interstate to visit a friend this weekend, which should be a nice reprieve from the daily grind.

*sighs*

Kara Valentine

I was gonna write some words about games I’ve been playing, and some surface thoughts about how games communities vary in terms of their welcomeness / warmth. Sadly I’m a bit tired and I think both of those topics might benefit from some incubation.

In short I played Diablo III, Cultist Simulator, RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, Sword of the Stars: The Pit and some Hollow Knight. I’ll talk about those more later.

Kara Valentine

Fixed an issue with my micropost rename script. Now it’s working perfectly!

For readers this means very little - microposts will have slugs (URL permalinks) that match their creation date. For me, it means that I no longer have to provide a name for microposts - they get obliterated and replaced with a filename (and thus, a slug) based on their creation date.

This means I can name microposts “asdflkjasdflkjalkdsf.md” and my script will replace my garbage with a proper filename. Hooray for automation!

Kara Valentine

Fixed an issue with my micropost rename script. Now it’s working perfectly!

For readers this means very little - microposts will have slugs (URL permalinks) that match their creation date. For me, it means that I no longer have to provide a name for microposts - they get obliterated and replaced with a filename (and thus, a slug) based on their creation date.

This means I can name microposts “asdflkjasdflkjalkdsf.md” and my script will replace my garbage with a proper filename. Hooray for automation!

Kara Valentine

I wrote a bash script that automatically renames micropost files according to their date of creation. This is an unfortunate necessity to allow microposts to have their URLs reflect their post time, due to Hugo enforcing a filename-to-default-URL behaviour.

I’ve hooked it up to my site deployment pipeline; to test it I’m going to set this micropost’s filename to some gibberish. If it shows up live on my site with a proper URL, the script will have worked!

Kara Valentine

I wrote a bash script that automatically renames micropost files according to their date of creation. This is an unfortunate necessity to allow microposts to have their URLs reflect their post time, due to Hugo enforcing a filename-to-default-URL behaviour.

I’ve hooked it up to my site deployment pipeline; to test it I’m going to set this micropost’s filename to some gibberish. If it shows up live on my site with a proper URL, the script will have worked!

Kara Valentine

Uhh… Forestry seems to not be building my site. That’s real weird…

If this micropost doesn’t make it build I might have to do some investimigatin’.

Kara Valentine

Last night after work, I set up a brand new Raspberry Pi and moved my Discord bot over to it.

This morning, I finally got around to writing down some “character facts” docs for a project I’m working on with a friend.

It feels good to be back in the swing of Actively Making Stuff.

Kara Valentine

Today’s been really weird. Quiet. Lonely. Stifling in silence.

I feel fragile, and uncertain, and afraid. My confidence is low and I feel very much like I’m lost.

There’s a lot on my mind, a lot even by my standards, and I fear its weight is slowly crushing me.

Kara Valentine

Feeling bad after doing something wrong is step one.

Doing something about it is step two.

Kara Valentine

Me, an hour ago: I AM A MIGHTY CAFFEINATED GOD OF CODE

Me, now: urghhhhh caffeine crash

(the code is good at least!)

Kara Valentine

Really looking forward to moving soon. Doing this commute five days a week is taking its toll.

I’m hoping to move within walking distance of work, which would help a lot with maintaining a proper sleep schedule… 💤

Kara Valentine

“…recently possessing a disposition that inclines one towards noticing the beautiful things in life…”

“…it has allowed her to recognise that her existence, however fleeting, is a shining light of hope despite everything; her confidence and passion inspiring those brave enough to fly close to her…”

Kara Valentine

Listening to my depresso playlist this morning. In a bit of a weird mood.

Kara Valentine

ladies and gentlemen, welcome to HEADACHE LAND, population ME

Kara Valentine

Today feels like a day of calibration. I’m finding my mind wandering to good memories. Unexpected, but welcome.

Kara Valentine

I briefly tried to get a cloned version of my site running on my phone. I got as far as to get Hugo serving my site on localhost:1313… but couldn’t access it from Chrome due to Termux being in a container or something.

Forestry it is, I guess. It would’ve been nice to be able to test it locally on my phone, and potentially optimise micropost flow… though I’ve just had an idea to make them more consistently named!

Kara Valentine

A reader reported some issues with viewing the site on mobile, which I’ve now fixed. If you’re reading and you come across any weird issues with the site, please let me know!

Kara Valentine

Testing timestamp things again.

Kara Valentine

Testing micropost things from Forestry. There seems to be no easy way to automatically name a file according to its creation timestamp :(

Kara Valentine

This is a test.

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but first… this will never not be funny, ahahahaha

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oh fuck it’s late i should sleep

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OI SPACEMAN LET ME GO TO SPACE

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testing testing one two three

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yeet

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Can I get uhhhhhhhhhhhh

Kara Valentine

Hello world. This is a micropost.