Freja's Blog

Apr 12: What did I do this week?

2026-04-12T21:23:29+02:00

Song of the week: the next hundred years - The Poor Plants and Ailing Animals</a>
Emoji of the moment: 🦷</p>

Had a good week!</h3>
You know, relatively - I'm not back to normal, but for this entire week and most of last week, I've barely needed to rest in bed during the day, which is very exciting for me. I didn't want to shout hello before crossing the river, but this really seems to be holding. Because I've been so happy about this, I've mainly been using the ability to do things that it's given me to play a lot of video games (Captain of Industry and Warframe</a>) in celebration, but I'm starting to get back to projects as well.</p>

Enjoyed some short YouTube videos</h3>
the designers of WIPEOUT have a timeless aesthetic</a></p>
Why do NES colors look so different in emulators?</a></p>
Mii channel theme but the violin and electric piano are swapped</a></p>
༄ GRAVITY BASINS ࿐</a></p>
Time-Lapse Arena Flip: Utah Jazz Game to Monster Jam</a></p>
Comparing Pitstops Across Motorsports</a></p>

Apr 5: What did I do this week?

2026-04-05T21:03:08+02:00

Song of the week: Nine Inch Nails - The Frail (version)</a>
Emoji of the moment: ⏲️</p>

Got a new mirror</h3>
It's big and pretty!</a></p>
I was thinking about how I'd like to replace the mirror I already had, which is smaller and broken (and was when I found it), and thought I'd just look at prices online, and I found this being sold at a 70% discount if ordered in the next few hours by a store nearby. It being so big made it pretty awful to carry the 600 meters or so between the store and the bus stop and the other bus stop and my apartment, but I survived. Definitely getting a hand truck before I get anything else that's big and heavy, though.</p>

Got custom art printed for my leverless controller</h3>
Overview</a> and source image</a> (and Eggbug closeup</a>). I think it being in black and white because color printouts at the library cost money and awkwardly stretched to fit the controller and the text being covered up by the buttons makes it better.</p>

Started a new project</h3>
I was displeased with available options for keeping track of books, so I thought I would not bother with any of them and just use a spreadsheet instead, and then I thought I could make the spreadsheet update process easier with a program specialized for this particular thing, and so here we are. Terminal Excel with just a few set columns for the information I care about, shortcuts to edit entries, and a button to add a book that takes an ISBN or author + title and gets metadata from Goodreads. Fortunately, libraries already exist for everything, so the hardest part for me is going to be making the UI look nice and work right.</p>
Saw a neat list</h3>
A List Of Games By Trans People Before 2010 by Dot Maetrix</a></p>
Watched a fun video</h3>
Three - The Machine That Took Over Tekken by Leon Massey</a></p>

Mar 29: What did I do this and last week?

2026-03-29T21:37:18+02:00

Song of the week: Kenji Kawai - M01 Utai I-Making of Cyborg</a>
Emoji of the moment: 🪞</p>

Got too busy to write last week's post</h3>
I decided to do laundry last Sunday and it all just got to be a bit much, so this post is for both weeks instead.</p>

Finished the 250 boxes part of Drawabox</h3>
They said it was impossible. They said no one in human history has ever drawn 250 boxes and no one ever will. They said that if I tried it, I would lose everything. But I did it. And I'm going to start drawing plants tomorrow! Drawing actual real-world objects is going to be fun.</p>

Got a Real Camera</h3>
A Canon EOS 2000D. I decided to get it in like mid-January, and then I had to wait until February to post Freja's February Fundraiser for it on social media, and then I had to wait until this week to get the last bit of money to actually buy it. It's been so long! But it's here now, and I like it. It takes sharper pictures with better colors than my phone, and it's just fun and satisfying to use.</p>

Got a ridiculous lamp and a pair of teacups</h3>
I haven't been able to hang the lamp up properly because I need to get a hook in my ceiling, which I don't know why this apartment doesn't have, but it's this big feathery thing</a>. I love it.</p>
The teacups (and saucers)</a> aren't quite as pretty as the ones I already had, but they are bigger. Nice to have.</p>

Looked through a box of old comics</h3>
I took it over from my father when he was clearing out his storage space. Most of the comics weren't very noteworthy, but there were a bunch of the Tintin comic albums, which I gave to the thrift store I got the lamp and teacups from, and, surprising me, some translated manga. I didn't know it was that big here in 1991.</p>
Here's Usagi Yojimbo teaching readers about samurai.</a></p>

Finished reading Titus Groan</h3>
Fascinating world, quite funny here and there, humor marred by the way it seems to expect you to love to laugh at fat people for being fat. I want to see what happens later, but I'm going to read some sci-fi first. Started on Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.</p>

When Flay judged the silhouette a good twelve paces distant he began to follow, and then there began the first of the episodes— that of the stalk. If ever man stalked man, Flay stalked Swelter. It is to be doubted whether, when compared with the angular motions of Mr. Flay, any man on earth could claim to stalk at all. He would have to do it with another word.</p> </blockquote>
Read a fun (two-part) post</h3>
ACOUP: Collections: Warfare in Dune, Part I: Fighting Faufreluches</a></p>
... which reminded me of Mussolini: Son of the Century, a TV show about that guy's early political career. It's worth watching for the music and editing, which make watching it feel like being swept up in a movement. It manages to show you both the attraction of such a movement and how hideous and awful it is at the same time, without directly saying so, unless you count that one scene where Mussolini looks into the camera and says "Make Italy great again".</p>
I've read Frank Herbert's six Dune books, and people are right when they say you should read them but stop when you're no longer enjoying them because they don't get better. God Emperor has a woman orgasm from seeing a cool guy climb a big wall, and then I think it's Heretics of Dune that contains the word "whore" 40+ times, and then there's the faction of evil women who mind control men by having sex with them real good. But the setting keeps being cool and fun. I think it's the most flawed series I've finished reading, but I don't regret it. But the sex stuff really does just get worse and worse and worse.</p>
Read a good article about GDQ</h3>
Games Done Quick's Long, Difficult Journey To A Better Gaming Future</a></p>
I've been watching GDQ's marathons since the first or second one, and what this article says tracks with what I know. It is really nice that they take such clear stances for queer people in such big events when they could just be safe and "neutral", even if the organization has made mistakes and been slow to act on things along the way.</p>

Mar 15: What did I do this week?

2026-03-15T21:43:31+01:00

Slept really well... NOT!!!</h3>
A lot of bad sleep this week. A lot of suffering through the night and then having half of the day go to actually sleeping, which is my excuse for not doing much this week. I did do some good cleaning and some drawing and stuff, but I don't really have anything to show off. Oh well!</p>

Watched Frost Fatales 2026</h3>
It's Games Done Quick for women and femmes. My highlights are Super Mario 64</a> and Super Metroid</a> for execution and Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!</a> for goofy commentary. I think I'm going to join the Fatales Discord and see if I can get involved in the community later this year.</p>

Watched a fun video</h3>
The inevitable Aliexpress video</a>, showing a bunch of cheap little tools and gadgets. I want all of them, even if I'll never use them.</p>

Mar 8: What did I do this week?

2026-03-08T22:29:12+01:00

Became a year older</h3>
It's my birthday on this very day, even! And that means I don't have to do anything I don't feel like, so see you next week.</p>

Mar 1: What did I do this week?

2026-03-01T22:18:38+01:00

Watched Douglas Is Cancelled</h3>
I agree with the popular influencer who got me to watch it that it is "a very good show about how men in positions of power use that power to twist narratives and both abuse women and lay blame for that abuse on the women themselves", and would add that it's also quite funny, but I did think that the writing fell apart a lot in the last episode. Not enough to ruin the whole thing, though.</p>
The previous Steven Moffat show I saw was Dracula in 2020, and as I recall, I thought that started strong but completely fell apart after (or maybe even during) the first episode. I did absolutely hate that show overall, so I suppose he's improved.</p>

Started watching some other shows</h3>
Treme and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The latter seems fine so far, but Treme! Wow. I'm only a couple of episodes in, but it's already just so compelling. Love to see more of Wendell Pierce.</p>

Started playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown</h3>
Mixed feelings so far. A lot of polish and some great features for a metroidvania, but also an Ubisoft Game with a lot of story that's unremarkable so far and other bloat. Can't turn off Ubisoft launcher achievement popups. I'm giving it until after the first big boss to do something interesting, and if it hasn't by then I'm just going to start skipping all the dialogue and cutscenes.</p>

Continued drawing boxes</h3>
I did #200 today, so the week after next I should be drawing other things! Exciting. I still haven't missed a day, and I've filled an entire 50-page paper pad, which is satisfying to look at. I wish I had the stamina for scheduled non-Drawabox drawing every day, but not yet. But eventually!</p>

Enjoyed winter starting to end</h3>
It's been above freezing all week here, and the snow has rained away. I've been wearing my warmest sweaters all day and all night for months, and it's been nice to be OK without them for a little bit here and there. Looking forward to getting to wear dresses again soonish.</p>

Metroidvania Mania: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

2026-02-26T19:26:24+01:00

(Game Boy Advance, 2001)</p>

Play time was 4 hours and 12 minutes, although that of course doesn't count time spent repeatedly dying to bosses, which there was a bit of. Underappreciated game overall, with a couple of significant weak points. I would not have played this game for very long without a patch that makes it so you always run when moving, without requiring you to double tap a direction. Without that, the game is just constantly a little bit annoying, and it adds up to a bad experience.</p>

The second big flaw is a combination of the final boss and the random drops from enemies. In my playthrough, where I didn't avoid killing enemies very much even when revisiting rooms, I had 8 of the 20 DSS cards in the game drop, and the abilities they gave me actually did give me a decent amount of choices and variety for most of the game, but I did not end up with a card combination that gave me a decent way to hit the final boss in his final phase, and that ended up being quite long and miserable as a result. Better boss design would've been nice, but you could also smooth it over with more drops.</p>

I like the idea of the equipment system, where you have just three armor pieces and those drop randomly from enemies, and instead of different weapons, you use the game's new "Dual Set-up System" to change the properties of the one whip you have. There are 10 Action cards and 10 Attribute cards, which very rarely drop from enemies, and you go to a menu and set one of both types to be active, and then you can press a button during gameplay to make your whip do fire damage or summon a familiar that attacks enemies or whatever. You have good enough baseline whip damage even if you get no card drops ever, and the drops theoretically just give you some more versatility for dealing with different situations. As noted above, though, that versatility can be pretty important, and the drops really are quite rare. It seems to me like the Castlevania metroidvanias could generally do with letting you buy more of the random drops, or having you find pieces of the souls/cards/whatever more frequently that you then assemble to get the full things, or having drops get increasingly likely with more kills, or something.</p>

This game seems to have been a learning experience for Konami when it comes to map design for the GBA, in that it has a lot of big and tall rooms, with much more verticality than Aria of Sorrow. You're not as good at moving vertically as horizontally, and hitting things is harder when they're above or below you, and more vertical rooms tend to be more annoying with knockback. I do like how the big rooms feel to run around in, and the size doesn't usually cause too much trouble... except during the boss fights. The bosses are mostly in big rooms, and I often had them completely offscreen - which doesn't stop them from preparing their next attack. You could say that keeping track of them is part of the challenge, but it really just feels like you're fighting the small screen more than the boss. Smaller bosses in smaller rooms would've been better.</p>

The boss fights are still generally good, and challenging (though perhaps less so if you have better card drop luck than I did). Some were easy, but a few of them required a bunch of tries while I figured out how to both avoid and do damage. (In the Dragon Zombies fight, it looks like their feet will hurt you if you touch them, but they don't!)</p>

The overall world map and the flow of the game seems to have been done thoughtfully and well, since even without map labels or colored zones, I generally found myself having a good idea of where to go next. Exploration is consistently rewarding, as there are a lot of little corners of rooms and rooms hidden behind breakable walls, and they all contain permanent stat increase items, which are always nice to find. Save points are pretty frequent, and I often found one just as I was getting dangerously low on health. No notes on the minimap, as there is no minimap! You should put a minimap in your metroidvania!</p>

The music in this game is great, and sounds good even on the GBA. I don't think it looks as good as Aria, but it does (I believe) have unique sprites for everything, and cool enemies that I don't remember seeing in other games, like the Electric Skeleton and the Fox Archer. The game has some alternate modes for multiple playthroughs, but they don't really fundamentally change the game at all. If I ever play this again, I might do it on Thief Mode, where you have worse offensive and defensive stats but much higher luck.</p>

Finally, this game has a very funny glitch relevant to speedrunning, where you do some stuff at the start of the game and then you automatically do 9,999 damage to everything on the screen every frame or so - but watch out! If you get hit by an enemy spawning on top of you, you get unglitched and the run is over. Recommended viewing: Circle of the Moon Nuclear Completionist Speedrun</a></p>

Feb 22: What did I do this week?

2026-02-22T21:47:37+01:00

Played M. Planets</h3>
Which if you don't know is a fan remake of the original NES Metroid that also lets you make custom rooms like in Mario Maker and import rooms other people have made and construct a randomized world map from those rooms, with your usual randomizer logic to prevent softlocks and such. It's a really impressive project and a great engine for quick little hopefully-legally-distinct-from-Metroid randos. I got a little obsessed with it for two or three days, which is why I haven't finished Circle of the Moon. Metroid Construction</a> has more info and downloads - note that the Discord linked there has newer minor versions (which are worth getting) and room packs.</p>

Worked in an office a little bit</h3>
It's not really a real job, and it's not paid, but it is proving to myself and others that office admin work is something I can do, and it makes social services happy and contributes to my financial stability in that way. And I am actually enjoying getting out of the house and being around people who are being really nice to me and feeling genuinely useful - sitting around at home, it's easy to forget how much better than a lot of people I am at using a computer. 3 hours twice a week. No problems so far.</p>
Read an interesting article</h3>
ACOUP: Collections: Against the State – A Primer on Terrorism, Insurgency and Protest</a></p>
Nodding along. I've been a fan of this blog for a while, though I'm like almost a year behind on new posts right now, aside from this one. The man needs a proofreader, but it's good stuff to think about.</p>
And probably something else, right?</h3>
I don't know, it's been one of those weeks where it just goes by and you don't really remember much.</p>

Feb 15: What did I do this week?

2026-02-15T21:44:28+01:00

Trimmed my hair</h3>
I've done it a few times now, and not only have I still not made a mess of it, but I think I'm even getting better at it. I continue to be happy about having this hairstyle that I like enough to maintain. I think it's going to be great together with cute dresses when it gets warmer, too.</p>

Painted my nails</h3>
And I have proof!</a></p>
Very long overdue. They're not as long as I like to have them, but they still look pretty. Hopefully I can avoid breaking them for a while.</p>

Metroidvania Mania: Haiku, the Robot

2026-02-14T21:44:00+01:00

(Steam, 2022)</p>

The time on my save file is 7 hours and 29 minutes, but that's with having restarted like halfway through the game because I wanted to try different exploration choices; it probably would've been around 8 hours if I had stuck with that one.</p>

I enjoyed this game a lot! I have some minor issues, as you will see below, but there's a lot to like about this and very little to dislike. I think it's a remarkably safe recommendation for anyone who wants to play a metroidvania - Super Metroid has physics and controls that turn some people off, the Castlevanias make some people feel like they have to do a lot of farming, Hollow Knight is too much for some people with the atmosphere and difficulty, but Haiku is just a really smooth ride. Some things I thought about while playing:</p>

Given that it's a post-apocalypse story, it's not very dark or depressing, and actually even hopeful. It doesn't take up very much space in the game, with just a few short exposition interludes. NPCs are charming and not annoying. If you want to completely understand everything then you should probably be taking notes as you go, but you'll get the gist of it regardless.</p>

I didn't do quite everything - there are a few sidequests left where I have to like talk to one NPC, and I'm missing one collectable, and there's some encrypted text that I didn't get around to trying to decipher, and I haven't done the boss rush or the new game minus where you only have 1 HP - but I think I will replay this game at some point and 100% it then.</p>

One thing I don't like about the Castlevania metroidvanias is that moving as fast as possible often involves a lot of repeated inputs, like backdashing and jumping and turning around in the air. For most of this game, on the other hand, fast movement is done by just going into morph ball form whenever you're on the ground. Easy on the fingers, but still has you actively doing something all the time. The combat movement is also convenient, in that you can move and jump while attacking without being slowed down, so you never take damage because you were locked into an attack animation.</p>

The game has a big, sprawling map with irregularly shaped rooms that make it nice to look at, and the different areas of the game world have different colors and are labeled on the map. An issue here is that you can't see room transitions on the map except where two different colors meet, because there's no grid or anything and what looks like a passage between rooms might just be a thinner section of one room, and that together with the lack of a minimap (!) makes navigation a little clunkier than it should be. You can't make a plan like "Take the left door out of this room, then the bottom right door, then right twice, then down".</p>

The money that enemies drop when killed is also used by you to heal yourself, which has a couple of interesting things to it - it makes you want to avoid healing if you can, and then the way healing works is that if you heal more than one point at a time then the points after the first are cheaper, so if you're efficiencybrained like me, you're tempted to be unsafe and not heal until you're at 1 HP and you don't think there's a save station nearby. But I ended up with a lot of spare money, so you don't actually need to do that. Also, healing takes time and stops you from moving while you're doing it, but if you're halfway through healing a hit point then you'll keep that half point for a few seconds if you interrupt the heal to move out of the way of an attack, so you can get a little extra healing in during boss fights by being smart and careful.</p>

What this game has for equipment is chips that you equip in a few different slots, which do things like let you attack slightly faster or give you 1 extra HP or make dropped spare parts fly to you. Some of them seem to just not be very good, and I'd rather have had fewer ones that were harder to choose between. One of them puts a question mark on the map when you get to a point where you need an ability that you don't have to get somewhere, and I think that's a cool idea, but I would really have liked to be able to write notes on the map as well.</p>

The game has a good idea with having you fast travel via trains that have save stations and vendors on them, so you don't have to spend time going back to one spot on the map, but the fast travel points end up being a little annoyingly far away from where you are or want to go sometimes.</p>

The world record any% speedrun for this game is only 20 minutes long, and I didn't notice any huge skips or glitches, but just doing really efficient routing that the game lets you do if you know where stuff is and what you can do with what you have. That's fun and cool, and I might try to do a little bit of speedrunning whenever I pick this game up again. Maybe a sub-hour run might be achievable, and that's always a fun trick.</p>

I could probably say a little more, but this is already way longer than I thought it would be! Play Haiku, the Robot.</p>

Feb 8: What did I do this week?

2026-02-08T22:41:08+01:00

Felt better</h3>
Finally! I was out of bed for most of the time that I was awake this week, I'm pretty sure. Continuing to be able to just decide to do things and then do them right away and also slowly reawakening neglected parts of myself. January didn't end up being the Month of Throwing Things Out, but that's fine. I'm doing a little bit here and there.</p>

Played a bunch of Last Epoch</h3>
I was in a weird state that happens sometimes after not being able to play games for a while, where it's hard to pick things back up because I'm afraid I won't be able to finish them, and so I went to Last Epoch, the 2024 diablolike, for something that doesn't present that kind of challenge. It's junk food, and sometimes junk food is just the thing. I played through the campaign in 11 hours as a Sentinel with a maximum survivability build, and it was fun to just ignore boss mechanics because they couldn't kill me. But that's enough of that for now, and next week I'm finally going to get back to Haiku, the Robot. I'm glad I felt well enough to do that much gaming.</p>

Drew some boxes</h3>
I finished box 130/250 today, so I'm definitely going to finish this part. I still haven't missed a day! If I can brush my teeth every day then I can do some drawing exercises every day, I guess. Doing more non-Drawabox drawing is one of the things I've been feeling like more as my energy level has gone back up, and I've made a plan for and started a little bit on a piece that I'm going to spend next week executing as well as I can. I might not end up showing it to anyone, but I'm going to put time and effort into it.</p>

Watched Back to Black 2026</h3>
One of the smaller GDQ speedrun marathons, featuring Black runners and raising money for Race Forward. This one only runs for four days and only for part of those days, so it hasn't been as much of a disruption as AGDQ and SGDQ usually are. Would recommend Mr. Bones</a>.</p>

Forgot something</h3>
I'm supposed to be writing down the headings for these posts during the week so I don't forget things, but I forgot to do that this time. I'm sure there's something else I was going to mention that just isn't coming to me right now. Oh well!</p>

Feb 1: What did I do this week?

2026-02-01T21:46:20+01:00

Uuuurgh. Buhhhhhhhh. Hrgnf.</h3>
New health problems kept me from doing much of anything this week, but I did at least figure out the cause and take care of it, so I should yet again be doing better next week. I did do some stuff, but I don't want to keep sitting up to write this, so I'll just keep doing it next week and talk about it then. There should also be maybe 2-4 mildly exciting things happening then, so watch out for that.</p>

Jan 25: What did I do this week?

2026-01-25T17:10:08+01:00

Slowly bounced back from last week</h3>
It wasn't as quick as I thought it was going to be, because of chaotic sleep messing me up, but now I'm back to where I was two weeks ago, and I can do things pretty easily again. Better late than never.</p>

Did some prep work for cleaning</h3>
I wiped my old unused HDDs and put them in a pile along with old GPUs so I can start throwing them out. There's a 500 GB HDD in there that was manufactured in April of 2011, and I think I'm probably not going to need it if I haven't by now. There's still time for January to be the Month of Throwing Stuff Out.</p>

Played a little bit of Quake 1</h3>
It's a good game. Looks pretty nice with the Ironwail engine. I wanted to try the fancy raytracing mod that someone made a while ago, but it just hard crashed.</p>

Finished Children of Time and started Titus Groan</h3>
Maybe Children of Time was last week? Either way, I really liked it, and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel after another book or two. I picked Titus Groan as a fantasy palate cleanser, and it's also quite enjoyable so far. Some very funny dialogue.</p>

Still kept Drawaboxing</h3>
I only drew one box on each of three days this week, but I never completely missed a day. I've now run two pens out of ink and made a real pile of filled pages, which I'm happy about. I'm probably mainly going to be doing digital art outside of Drawabox, but I like the idea of filled sketchbooks.</p>

Redesigned my website</h3>
You probably already noticed. I want to also add some subtle background animations and blog comments, but those didn't make it in this week. At some point.</p>

Watch out, I stopped gemlogging!

2026-01-23T03:32:16+01:00

OK, here we are again. I quite like the idea of Project Gemini</a>, but I want to do some stuff with my website that it doesn't support, and so now we're back to a normal website blog, but with a slightly new look and a different set of posts. I think this structure should work for now, where I do regular Sunday posts, Metroidvania Mania posts as I finish games, and other posts as one-time events occur. I haven't been thinking of short joke posts much since I haven't been enjoying social media much, but maybe they'll return at some point, probably on a separate page. We'll see. It's not like this is the last time I'll do this kind of thing.</p>

Jan 18: What did I do this week?

2026-01-18T00:00:00+01:00

Got my face zapped for the first time!</h3>
In a hair removal kind of way. This is using IPL, which is like laser but with more than one wavelength of light - it's a little annoying to talk about, because everyone (in my social circles) knows what laser hair removal is but not so much IPL, and I can't say I got lasered because that would be inaccurate but "IPL" usually requires some explaining. Anyway, I have the right skin and hair for it, so hopefully I'll get good results. Next time will be in 6-8 weeks.</p>

Kept Drawaboxing</h3>
I still haven't burned out on it, and I've gotten past the first 50 of the 250 boxes challenge. The next 50 are harder; you draw boxes in three-point perspective like before, but this time without explicitly marking your vanishing points on the page. That makes it harder to know exactly where the lines are supposed to go and to judge how well I did, which feels a little discouraging. I might end up reducing my pace a little.</p>

Sent a scary email</h3>
I'm a hero.</p>

Thought about Gemini and my website</h3>
I think the Gemini project is a really neat idea, and I've enjoyed this time of Geminiposting, but I think it might be drawing to a close. The biggest thing is really that I have the domain frejas dot website</em>, and a Gemini capsule isn't a website, so for consistency I would want to get a new domain name, and I both don't have any good ideas for one and don't want to spend money on one right now. But I am working on giving my website yet another new look inspired by the Amfora Gemini client (plus a couple of new little features), and I'm going to continue the blogging plans I made and also try to make my blogging workflow as simple as my gemlogging workflow is.</p>

Was wiped out</h3>
Because of some combination of my body dealing with the aforementioned zapping and some other stuff, I've been more tired than usual for most of the week, and have mostly been resting in bed. Today's been OK, though, and I think tomorrow I'll probably be back to where I was a week ago. Hoping to get back to gaming next week.</p>

Jan 11: What did I do this week?

2026-01-11T00:00:00+01:00

Watched AGDQ 2026</h3>
I've been watching GDQs since either the first or second one, ten thousand years ago, and the main events have been highlights of my year. It's just so much fun, and it's heartwarming that they're raising so much money for charity and also that GDQ has been explicitly inclusive of trans (and, more recently, Black) people, and that people respond so well to that - runners and donors keep saying "Trans rights!", and the crowd keeps cheering for it. It's a nice reminder that actually, there are a lot of good people out there. It's also kept me from playing video games (except for a little OpenTTD, which I think I'm now tired of again) and watching TV shows, and I'm looking forward to getting back to those.</p>
Started the 250 Boxes Challenge part of Drawabox</h3>
I'm well past two weeks of Drawabox now, and while this part of it is a little samey - I'm drawing five boxes each day, and it's going to be the same exercise until I have 50 done, when the instructions will change a bit - I am still enjoying it. I'm being rewarded for discipline and patient attention to detail, which is nice.</p>
Worked on Game Boy emulator</h3>
A little frustrated by this! The part I'm almost done with is the CPU and implementing all of its instruction set, and I've carefully gone through all of it but it still doesn't behave correctly, and test software that people have made hasn't been quite enough for me to find exactly where the problem is. It seems like there's a bug in either one of the methods that write to RAM or one of the control flow ones, and I don't know. I'm probably going to take a break from it and then go through everything again.</p>
Moved router and server</h3>
These little machines used to live under my bed, which has worked well except for requiring me to do some uncomfortable crawling when I've needed physical access. This week, I put some books I'm never going to read again and don't care about in a box and moved the machines into my bookshelf instead, which is much more convenient. I don't need to touch them very often, but I'm going to be very thankful the next time I do.</p>
Remembered that reading books is fun sometimes</h3>
I started on Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and I'm having a good time. I haven't read any stories starring intelligent, tool-using, math-Understanding giant spiders before. Diversity win!</p>

A song for each letter of the (English) alphabet

2026-01-09T00:00:00+01:00

On Tumblr, people are posting a song for each letter in their usernames. I wanted to do that, but thought "freja" is a little short, so I'll just do A-Z instead. Here we go:</p>
All of the below in one playlist</a></p>
AKUMA - ALEX & TOKYO ROSE feat. Rachel Mcalpine</a>
Blood and Sand / Milk and Endless Waters - All Them Witches</a>
Cemetery Breeding - Black Mountain</a>
Dream of Stone - Gazpacho</a>
Estranged - Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky</a>
Funeralopolis - Electric Wizard</a>
Girls - Death in Vegas</a>
Higgs Boson Blues - Nick Cave & The Bad Seed</a>
I Love Creedence - Casiotone for the Painfully Alone</a>
Jimme's Song (Full Band version) - Emanuel and the Fear</a>
Knee 5 - Philip Glass</a>
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space - Spiritualized</a>
Magenta - Hooverphonic</a>
No Fun - SONOIO</a>
Ocean Planet - Gojira</a>
Perfection? - Guilt Machine</a>
Queen of the Meadow - Elysian Fields</a>
Rock’n Roll - The Sounds</a>
stella - Kashiwa Daisuke</a>
This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody) (edit) - Trevor Green</a>
Under Your Spell - Desire</a>
Viices - Made in Heights</a>
What the Snowman Learned About Love - Stars</a>
xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_ÜXXx (99jakes remix) - 100 gecs</a>
Your Love Is Killing Me - Sharon Van Etten</a>
Zitilites - Kashmir</a></p>
That was fun! Every letter had some tough choices to make.</p>

Pictures from a walk in the snow

2026-01-08T00:00:00+01:00

We're following our usual pattern of a dusting of snow for one day or so in November and then nothing until January. I don't have to shovel or drive in snow, so I'm always happy to see it.</p>
Looking out from my balcony and seeing that everything's white.</a>
The city is pretty good about clearing footpaths. Glad I'm not driving.</a>
Stay warm, crow friend.</a>
Real winter with icicles and everything.</a>
Kids will not be deterred from playing outside.</a>
Selfie jumpscare. It was just below freezing.</a>
Unsung hero. There should be a statue somewhere honoring snow plow drivers.</a>
My cat Simulacrum's first time in the snow. She loved it.</a></p>

Jan 4: What did I do this week?

2026-01-04T00:00:00+01:00

Started using Gemini</h3>
Aside from posting about my projects, as I've already done once, I'm going to try to do this, which is a weekly post giving a summary of my week. I think I'm doing enough things now that I'll always have at least one thing to mention, maybe.</p>
Started doing regular journaling in Obsidian</h3>
I'm writing this post in Obsidian, and I'm going to save it there and also add another section for myself about how I've been feeling and other private stuff. I think doing posting and journaling at the same time will make it easier to remember to do the latter.</p>
Drawabox</h3>
I'm almost done with the first section of Drawabox, in which you learn to draw lines, ellipses, and boxes - I will be done after tomorrow's exercise, which is the same as today's - and I feel pretty good about it! I'm almost up to two weeks of daily Drawaboxing, and that's usually around when I suddenly lose interest and drop things like this, but with this there's a clear roadmap to follow and it's already fun and rewarding, so I think I might actually keep it going. We'll see.</p>
Computer stuff</h3>
I added some local services:</p>

Beszel, a system monitor (because I run so many services)</li>
Dashy, a dashboard showing all my services (see above)</li>
BookLore, a library management system (think Calibre)</li>
Linkding, a bookmarks manager (because I keep switching browsers every now and then, so keeping bookmarks outside my browser makes sense)</li>
OpenTTD dedicated server (to invite others to when I've settled on settings)</li> </ul>
Read a neat article</h3>
(I actually read it a little before this week, but I want to get in the habit of saving good articles and videos I come across.)</p>
On Inca masonry - I didn't know only the front faces were so carefully fitted together!</a></p>

Metroidvania Mania: The List

2026-01-02T00:00:00+01:00

Here is my list of metroidvanias that I want to play and talk about. I want to stick to traditional sidescrollers that aren't roguelites or heavy on puzzles, so no Arkhams or Dead Cells or Animal Well. Games marked with a ♼ are ones I've played before, though mostly not recently. Sequels that aren't listed will probably be added later. I'm not playing them in any particular order, just what I feel like when it's time for a new one.</p>
To play</h3>

Afterimage</li>
Aliens: Infestation</li>
Astalon: Tears of the Earth</li>
Ato</li>
Axiom Verge ♼</li>
Blade Chimera</li>
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ♼</li>
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow ♼</li>
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia ♼</li>
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin ♼</li>
Constance</li>
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights</li>
Environmental Station Alpha</li>
Hollow Knight: Silksong (recently played the original)</li>
Iconoclasts</li>
Infernax</li>
Islets</li>
Momodora: Moonlit Farewell</li>
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight ♼</li>
Ori and the Blind Forest ♼</li>
Ori and the Will of the Wisps ♼</li>
Phoenotopia Awakening</li>
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown</li>
Record of Lodoss War -Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth- ♼</li>
Rune Fencer Illyia</li>
Rusted Moss</li>
Sundered ♼</li>
Super Metroid: Subversion ♼</li>
Super Metroid X-Fusion</li>
The Mummy Demastered</li>
Timespinner</li>
Ufouria</li>
Unsighted</li>
Valdis Story: Abyssal City</li>
Vision Soft Reset ♼</li> </ul>
Played and posted about</h3>

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow</a></li>
Haiku, the Robot</a></li>
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon</a></li> </ul>
(Wow, that's a lot. This might take a while.)</p>

Metroidvania Mania: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

2026-01-01T01:00:00+01:00

(Game Boy Advance, 2003)</p>
I beat this on December 20, with a play time of 4 hours and 37 minutes. I had played it before, but it was at least a few years ago.</p>
The souls system, where regular enemies have a chance to drop their souls that you then equip and use like subweapons or support skills, I think works well as long as you're OK with just getting whatever you get and don't feel like you have to have some particular ones. A lot of them are kind of useless, but there are so many of them that that's not really a problem, and some of them are quite fun.</p>
The equipment in the game feels a little simple, without very much variety in how it functions. Not being able to slash downward with swords makes it awkward to hit things sometimes. It didn't feel like there were many interesting decisions to make with equipment. There's an equipment and item shop, but I mainly found it useful for healing potions - which I think maybe should have been more limited in either their supply or use, because it's not very interesting to just quaff your way through boss fights (though I do also appreciate having that option).</p>
Not having a minimap means I have to stop moving to open the map to see where I'm going all the time. Might have been hard to fit one on the GBA screen, though.</p>
I didn't notice any big flaws in the map design, except that save rooms and teleport rooms are always fairly far apart - I actually like it when I'm exploring a new area and my resources get low and I have to turn back and carefully get back to a save point, but in this game I often felt like that journey was longer than it should have been and not very interesting. I did feel like I always had an idea of where I could go and get something done, which is good.</p>
The story is pretty thin, but it's not really the point, and it also doesn't take up much time, so that's fine. The game doesn't take up much time on the whole, and I would say it's maybe a little short, but I suppose that's appropriate for a handheld title, and what's there is good. I don't think I realized my first time through that "Arikado" sounds suspiciously similar to a certain other name, and I think that's fun.</p>
The game looks good and has good music, as usual for Castlevanias. The music would have been great on another console, but they did about as well as they could have with the GBA's capabilities.</p>
There's a bad ending that you get by just beating the game, a good ending that I think the game gives you a reasonable amount of hints for, at least if you know that it exists, and apparently a sort of bonus ending with like one extra line in the ending cutscene if you do an unreasonable amount of grinding. I'm glad I don't feel compelled to do such things.</p>
Beating the game lets you play through it again in Julius Mode, where you control Julius instead of Soma. I want to play through the Castlevanias with these alternate modes that they have, but in this case I didn't find it very interesting, because I don't think Julius feels that good to play and his gameplay never changes.</p>
It's solid! I think I might try the randomizer for it at some point. Good game to watch speedruns of, too.</p>

Watch out, I'm [no longer] gemlogging!

2026-01-01T00:00:00+01:00

Well, here we are in 2026. I've been struggling with illness for a long time, but I seem to have gotten it figured out now - I still have to spend a lot of time resting, but I've been getting better and I can do at least a little bit of stuff every day. So, here are some things I hope to do (and post about as I do them) this year:</p>

Do Gemini stuff (read, write, maybe even make a friend or two)</li>
Do Drawabox (hopefully do exercises, but at least do some reading) every day</li>
Draw a bunch of pixel art swords, as an art project that feels appropriate for me</li>
Play and review a lot of metroidvania games</li>
Get my Super Metroid speedrun time down below 1 hour real time</li>
Finish my half-finished Game Boy emulator</li>
Make some games</li>
Get into studying Japanese (will have to wait until I feel like I'm ready for another daily thing)</li>
Get back into streaming (will have to wait until I'm even more ready)</li> </ul>

Some Moby-Dick quotes I like

2025-05-05T00:03:37+02:00

And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.</p> </blockquote>

He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.</p> </blockquote>

Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.</p> </blockquote>

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.</p> </blockquote>

Ah, the world! Oh, the world!</p> </blockquote>

But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!</p> </blockquote>

I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.</p> </blockquote>

I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world.</p> </blockquote>

Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!</p> </blockquote>

CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.</p> </blockquote>

But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!</p> </blockquote>

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?</p> </blockquote>

Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.</p> </blockquote>

I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this slippery world that can hold, man.</p> </blockquote>

“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab,</p> </blockquote>

There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.</p> </blockquote>

Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting!</p> </blockquote>

Read it if you can.</p> </blockquote>

Freja's Blog

Apr 12: What did I do this week?

Apr 5: What did I do this week?

Mar 29: What did I do this and last week?

Got too busy to write last week's post</h3> I decided to do laundry last Sunday and it all just got to be a bit much, so this post is for both weeks instead.</p>

Mar 15: What did I do this week?

Mar 8: What did I do this week?

Became a year older</h3> It's my birthday on this very day, even! And that means I don't have to do anything I don't feel like, so see you next week.</p>

Mar 1: What did I do this week?

Started watching some other shows</h3> Treme and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The latter seems fine so far, but Treme! Wow. I'm only a couple of episodes in, but it's already just so compelling. Love to see more of Wendell Pierce.</p>

Metroidvania Mania: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

Feb 22: What did I do this week?

Feb 15: What did I do this week?

Beat Haiku, the Robot</h3> This game is very good! Really easy metroidvania to recommend to anyone. I think Circle of the Moon (with an always run patch) is next.</p>

Metroidvania Mania: Haiku, the Robot

Feb 8: What did I do this week?

Feb 1: What did I do this week?

Jan 25: What did I do this week?

Slowly bounced back from last week</h3> It wasn't as quick as I thought it was going to be, because of chaotic sleep messing me up, but now I'm back to where I was two weeks ago, and I can do things pretty easily again. Better late than never.</p>

Played a little bit of Quake 1</h3> It's a good game. Looks pretty nice with the Ironwail engine. I wanted to try the fancy raytracing mod that someone made a while ago, but it just hard crashed.</p>

Redesigned my website</h3> You probably already noticed. I want to also add some subtle background animations and blog comments, but those didn't make it in this week. At some point.</p>

Watch out, I stopped gemlogging!

Jan 18: What did I do this week?

Sent a scary email</h3> I'm a hero.</p>

Jan 11: What did I do this week?

Remembered that reading books is fun sometimes</h3> I started on Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and I'm having a good time. I haven't read any stories starring intelligent, tool-using, math-Understanding giant spiders before. Diversity win!</p>

A song for each letter of the (English) alphabet

Pictures from a walk in the snow

Jan 4: What did I do this week?

Started using Gemini</h3> Aside from posting about my projects, as I've already done once, I'm going to try to do this, which is a weekly post giving a summary of my week. I think I'm doing enough things now that I'll always have at least one thing to mention, maybe.</p>

Computer stuff</h3> I added some local services:</p>

Read a neat article</h3> (I actually read it a little before this week, but I want to get in the habit of saving good articles and videos I come across.)</p>

Metroidvania Mania: The List

Metroidvania Mania: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Watch out, I'm [no longer] gemlogging!

Some Moby-Dick quotes I like

Got too busy to write last week's post</h3>
I decided to do laundry last Sunday and it all just got to be a bit much, so this post is for both weeks instead.</p>

Became a year older</h3>
It's my birthday on this very day, even! And that means I don't have to do anything I don't feel like, so see you next week.</p>

Started watching some other shows</h3>
Treme and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The latter seems fine so far, but Treme! Wow. I'm only a couple of episodes in, but it's already just so compelling. Love to see more of Wendell Pierce.</p>

Beat Haiku, the Robot</h3>
This game is very good! Really easy metroidvania to recommend to anyone. I think Circle of the Moon (with an always run patch) is next.</p>

Slowly bounced back from last week</h3>
It wasn't as quick as I thought it was going to be, because of chaotic sleep messing me up, but now I'm back to where I was two weeks ago, and I can do things pretty easily again. Better late than never.</p>

Played a little bit of Quake 1</h3>
It's a good game. Looks pretty nice with the Ironwail engine. I wanted to try the fancy raytracing mod that someone made a while ago, but it just hard crashed.</p>

Redesigned my website</h3>
You probably already noticed. I want to also add some subtle background animations and blog comments, but those didn't make it in this week. At some point.</p>

Sent a scary email</h3>
I'm a hero.</p>

Remembered that reading books is fun sometimes</h3>
I started on Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and I'm having a good time. I haven't read any stories starring intelligent, tool-using, math-Understanding giant spiders before. Diversity win!</p>

Started using Gemini</h3>
Aside from posting about my projects, as I've already done once, I'm going to try to do this, which is a weekly post giving a summary of my week. I think I'm doing enough things now that I'll always have at least one thing to mention, maybe.</p>

Read a neat article</h3>
(I actually read it a little before this week, but I want to get in the habit of saving good articles and videos I come across.)</p>
On Inca masonry - I didn't know only the front faces were so carefully fitted together!</a></p>