Welcome to my Now Page, my thoughts and what I’ve been up to lately. Loosely inspired by my friend Jack Grimes’ format. You’re reading the 4/28/25 version of this page. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Making

Well it’s been a hot minute since I’ve updated this huh? I actually wrote out a whole post a bit under a week ago, but I didn’t finish it that day and then so much happened that I didn’t feel like backdating it. So I’m leaving some parts of it just sitting here in Obsidian, but also copying some of it into this week’s Now page. Eh, it’s fine don’t worry about it.

Most of my effort has gone to planning and running Concinnity, the con we run at my university! It was a HUGE amount of effort, but it was so worth it. This year went pretty smoothly, and most of the criticisms I could think of were of the “we could improve on this” variety, not “we dropped the ball on this”. Now I’m thinking of ways to put systems in place to improve for future years, since I noticed that a lot of the things that went smoothly were those where we had systems in place to manage them easier instead of doing everything by hand.

Speaking of Concinnity, I ended up being on 2 panels! I ran a furry meetup, which actually had a ton of attendees and went really well, (if anyone followed the link to my site, hello!) and got pulled into Cool Things You Should Know About last-minute. It’s a time-honored Concinnity tradition where we get 3 or 4 people up on stage to yap about, well, cool stuff we think the audience should know about! This year, it was rice cookers, electric kettles, kitchen gadgets, seasonal Red Bull flavors, whatever we bought from artists during the con, board game stores, and making your own website with Neocities. (hey, I do that last one!) I think I know why people are Podcast Guys now, I don’t have the desire to do this more than once a year but it’s kinda fun!

Doing

I got burnt the hell out for a week or so leading up to the con, but after it all passed and I actually got some freakin’ sleep for once, I feel better than ever. In the span of 48 hours, from Friday morning to Sunday morning, I took a differential equations test, shouted at some fascist losers who decided to show up to our campus in really badly-tailored suits, talked with our Dean of Students about protecting international and immigrant students, took a Mechanics of Materials test, set up for Concinnity, ran it, then tore it down. I slept for like 12 hours on Sunday. And then I got up really late at night, made dinner, and watched Vinesauce Joel videos that made me laugh so hard I cried. One hell of a weekend.

A friend of mine suggested using a kanban board for planning Concinnity next year, so I did a little research on it and ended up finding a kanban plugin that works here in Obsidian. Obviously I’m pretty new to the system, but just putting my initial crop of tasks in, it looks like it’s gonna work really well! I get the analysis paralysis of “oh shit I have a bunch of stuff to do, what am I gonna work on”, so having a glanceable list and a limit to work-in-progress tasks seems like it’ll be really handy. I’ve got my WIP limit set to 3 so far, guess I’ll see if that’s too low.

From last week:

I’ve been trying to use my phone more thoughtfully lately. I’ve hacked my Kindle and gotten back into reading (more on that later), and apparently with KOReader you can even use it to read manga? I’m having issues with the plugin that allows you to download manga from different sites, but I’ve got a few manga I need to catch up on.

Part of the aforementioned phone stuff is not getting trapped in the news site loop. I’ve got a pretty bad tendency to loop through visiting the same few sites, typically The Verge, Polygon, Ars Technica, and a few other techie news sites. A few months ago, I tried one of those “pick certain sites to block for 5 seconds” browser extensions, and that generally just pissed me off. I’ve had a much better experience with the flow of typing in the URL, taking a breath, and thinking “do I really need to look at this news source right now?” Sure, it’s more dependent on myself, but the answer is more often than not “no, not really”.

I’ve also tried to do more puzzles when I do pick up my phone, stuff that makes me think instead of scrolling. From the Field Notes Staple Day newsletter a while ago, Gisnep is a pretty good one, and I’ve gotten really into Blueberry and Circle 9. Circle 9 has a bunch of cool daily puzzles, and they can get pretty damn hard too.

Watching

So earlier in the month, I checked out a screening of Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door at an indie theater near me. (It’s also known as Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, but the Japanese title is SO much cooler.) One of the coolest things about it is how it’s sci-fi, but gives us a very average-person look at how it affects the world. Hell, you could show someone who doesn’t know Cowboy Bebop the entire opening sequence and they would have no idea it’s sci-fi. Two of my favorite movies, Summer Wars and Belle, do a pretty similar thing with their settings, and it’s one of my favorite things about it.

From last week:

Oh my god I’m getting further into Fruits Basket and it just gets better and more gut-punchy. I heard the criticism of “can there PLEASE be a responsible, caring adult in this series?!” and kinda agreed at first, but around the midpoint of season 2 they get a lot more depth. Mayu and Hatori’s episode is a really nice side story, and thematically it’s a great parallel to Yuki’s emotional walls showing a few cracks during the school trip a few episodes later. Ayame is great as always, and it’s outstanding writing to show him strategically playing up and then breaking his over-the-top act for the sake of Yuki. Kazuma is the good mentor that Kyo and Hatsu sorely need with how fucked up the Soma family is. Rin’s backstory is an absolute gut punch but Hatori and Kazuma showing that there are at least some Somas worth trusting is heartwarming. It’s just such a good series and I’m so glad I started watching it.

During my friends’ anime night last week, we watched To Be Hero X. I like the setting, where heroes are given their powers by what people believe about them, so it all turns into a popularity contest and forces the whole superhero media ecosystem to exist if heroes want to keep their powers. There’s some really cool blending of 3D and comic book 2D animation here too. I’m not sure it’s hooked me enough to keep up with it as it releases, and I’ve got waaaaay too much to do right now to watch more than one series, but I’m keeping it on my radar.

Reading

I ended up finishing Guards! Guards! last week, and it was excellent. Everything I’ve heard about Discworld is true: it’s hilarious, really cleverly-written, but also when Terry Pratchett knows how to set a moody scene, he does it extremely well. Somehow, when he does a bit of genre-awareness, it stays pretty genuine, more of a pastiche than MCU snark. There’s a reason it’s a classic.

I’m thinking next up I’ll read either Men at Arms, the next one in the City Watch series, or return to The Expanse with Caliban’s War. Either way, both are excellent, and reading is much better than scrolling my phone endlessly.

Playing

Mostly Pacific Drive and Gravity Circuit. Pacific Drive has an incredible vibe and extremely tight survival game loop, and for being such a small detail the sound design really stands out to me. Hearing one of the magnet-grabby anomalies detect you or the storm siren whirr up is terrifying.

Gravity Circuit is like if Mega Man was tokusatsu, and I’m really digging that vibe so far. The grappling hook is a little finnicky, I keep hitting the button just after I should and juuuust barely missing what I’m trying to hook at, but using it for grab-and-throw combos is incredibly fun. Banger soundtrack, great music, fantastic NES-style art (despite it looking like NES Mega Man, it’s closer to Mega Man X), check it out, folks.