fluffy rambles

Become critter!

May 17, 2023 5:58 PM (11 months ago) Comments

So whatever happened to my VRChat avatar project?

Well, it went really well, so well that I decided to make it a purchasable base model. You can get it for as low as $25 (with a suggested minimum of $30). It also comes with extensive documentation about how to add more materials and I feel like my setup for material swapping is really well-designed and makes things much easier than I’ve seen on other avatars. So it’s probably worth buying just for that alone!

At some point I’ll probably start putting some VRChat documentation onto this site (including the material-swap guide and an explanation of how I set my system up since it’s pretty easy to apply to other avatars and makes life much, much easier). But I kind of want to do some site layout refreshing first. And I need to figure out which section of the site is best suited for it. So, quick poll, what makes the most sense?

Monitoring my feed reader

May 15, 2023 8:16 PM (11 months ago) Comments

Every time I get hyperfixated on a thing, I end up doing it at the expense of all else. Right now my hyperfocus is on working on making a sellable version of my VRChat avatar (which is almost ready!)

But I needed a break, so I checked my feed reader, and realized, oh wow, I haven’t checked my feed reader in a few days. Oops.

So anyway, I did what any good nerd would do, and gave myself some alerting and monitoring to track my feed stats.

Even more VRChat tips and tricks

May 12, 2023 11:20 PM (11 months ago) Comments

I’ve been completely redoing my avatar from scratch and this time around it’s turned out great!

Anyway now that I’ve learned more about Blender and VRChat in general I have a bunch more stuff to share since last time. (And some of this will apply to Unity in general too! Sort of, anyway.)

Bandcamp Friday, May 2023

May 5, 2023 12:36 AM (11 months ago) Comments

For the next 23.5 hours, Bandcamp is waiving their cut of music purchases made on their platform, which makes it an amazing time to buy independent music there.

As always, I have plenty of stuff you can get there (including a recently-released 80-minute meditation album and an hour-long musical journey inspired by a variety of coffee grinders), and you can get a pretty decent discount on my music if you just buy it all at once as a discography.

I also like to keep a checklist of albums to buy on this day, and this month the two albums I bought are a recent release by my friend Sam and the discography of ratwyfe mostly because I heard someone do a cover of his song cryptid and I knew right away that I’d totally dig all of his music.

Anyway. Support independent musicians, both by buying the music that you like, but also spreading the word of mouth of the music that you like, too. You might not think you have much of a voice but every little bit helps way more than you think; every flood begins with a handful of raindrops.

More rambling about electric vehicles

May 2, 2023 12:14 AM (11 months ago) Comments

I don’t know why my brain keeps on fixating on EVs. I already have my Leaf SL, and I’m really happy with it all in all. I try to be excited about future tech and this usually manifests in me starting to think about what car I’d buy next, which then starts to feel like me planning to buy another car, even though I really don’t need to.

Anyway, a lot of my thoughts about the current cars worth mention have changed since that last article, and here’s my current thoughts on things.

Prognosis

April 21, 2023 2:20 PM (12 months ago) Comments

So it turns out I didn’t have anything to worrry about. The angiogram showed no blockage whatsoever and hopefully this means I’ll stop having heart-concern panic attacks. No angioplasty, no stent, etc.

The most annoying thing right now is I’m not allowed to use my right hand until Sunday, and also cannot shower until then, since that could potentially cause a hematoma or arterial rupture in my right wrist artery (which is where they inserted the probe). So I’ll be stinky tomorrow, and also I can’t do any of my fun activities. At least I have a lot of prepared foods available.

The whole experience wasn’t too bad. The entire team felt supportive and friendly, and we joked around a lot during the whole thing. During the procedure I was given a small dose of midazolam, which helped me to relax, but wasn’t enough to get an amnesiac effect, so I remember the whole thing. The only really painful bit was at the very end when my forearm started to spasm while the probe was still inserted.

Also I asked for souvenir pictures but I think they thought I was joking. Maybe I’ll get them on MyChart? I dunno. It’ll go nicely next to my esophogeal endoscopy photo from when I was having stomach problems a decade ago.

They seemed to be really surprised that I understood most of the medical terminology and that they didn’t need to coddle me or the like. One of the consent forms asked me to write, in my own words, what I thought was going to happen and I wrote “angiogram w/ potential angioplasty” and this was really surprising to them.

Anyway afterwards I got hospital food for lunch. I ordered the salmon. It was pretty okay. Hard to eat one-handed though.

Anxiety, yesterday and tomorrow

April 20, 2023 11:05 AM (12 months ago) Comments

Last night I had to drive to choir practice myself, and I had a panic attack on the way. I managed to push through it and felt fine when I got there. So of course I had another panic attack on the way home, because my brain decided that no, proof of being able to drive safely is NOT enough anymore to sustain a lack of anxiety when driving.

Tomorrow I am going in for an angiogram and potential angioplasty (depending on what it turns up). The procedure itself is pretty straightforward and primarily preventative; non-invasive imaging was inconclusive as to how much arterial blockage I have (if any), and I seem to have an arterial abnormality that makes imaging difficult. So it is out of an abundance of caution that I am getting the angiogram, and if any blockage is found it will be mitigated, and perhaps a stent will be installed as well (although my dad also has an arterial abnormality which made a stent installation impossible for him when he went through a similar thing, in a much more emergent situation).

My least favorite question in all of tech recruiting

April 16, 2023 4:02 PM (a year ago) Comments

“Are you frontend, backend, or full-stack?”

I really hate this question, for so many reasons.

First of all, it presupposes that there’s only two sorts of things that are done in software anymore: either you’re making websites (frontend) or services called by them (backend), or you’re someone who does both, but still using the frontend/backend dichotomy.

There are so many other kinds of software out there. Not all the world is Building Websites. Just off the top of my head there’s the extremely broad categories of graphics, platform, audio, gameplay, automation, embedded, infrastructure, distributed systems, and so much more.

Even in today’s dystopian push towards blockchain and machine learning, what kinds of engineer works on the underlying systems there? It’s neither backend nor frontend.

Goodbye, Twitter third-party login

April 14, 2023 3:58 PM (a year ago) Comments

So, a little while ago I did an extremely unscientific poll on login methods via Authl on this website. The results of that (measured by folks who accessed my site for any authenticated reason, not just folks visiting the login method poll):