This fight still sucks, especially in Tactician. But it made me who I am today, because nothing is sacred and exploits are fair as long as you win. XD

I know there's no financial incentive, but I do wish anime distributors like CR handled their metadata better. Going through their titles for the sub archive, I ran into so many external and internal inconsistencies that I'm truly surprised they got at least a handful right.

I had to learn Rust but I finally rebuilt my CR subtitle pull program for SubArchivist, which means this project is back in action! This had to be done to reduce tedium for my own sanity and to streamline some steps my Python glue code can't accommodate.

Looks like search algorithms did their thing and now lots of people have found SubArchivist. That's nice, but uh... guess I have to include last season's subs and to do it more efficiently, I really should fix up my code. XD

Just finished Shuten Order. Despite the scuffed localization and some jank ideas, you wouldn't think this was a Kodaka directed game with how coherent and clear its message and execution is. Hell, if anything, he did a Kojima and expressed the same sentiments as HL if you look past the wackiness.

Might be a crazy thought, but I think a lot of us in our late 20s onward are probably as old or older than our parents on a mental level. We've been forced to process so much on our own because it wasn't a thing then and it's not as easy anymore to simply look away and pretend it doesn't involve us.

Finished Hundred Line. The best games for me are ones whose ambition crosses over to excessive indulgence and somehow finds its way back again. It makes the art human as we're not meant to make art for others. We do it for ourselves first and hope that others can relate. This is one of them.

Major Yakuaru 3.0 update. Streamlining aside, you can add terms independently now! This is fully automated as long as the submission rules are follow. Been a long time coming with a database migration because the previous manual method became too unwieldy as it hit 600 terms. Enjoy!

Almost done with the Yakuaru rebuild, then I realized I need to implement more validation checks for submissions. Of course, it's not like people are gonna submit garbage data, but it's easy to do accidentally, hard to clean up when it goes through, and people are people and do weird stuff.

There is one good thing about the current AI translation slop fest, and that it finally tipped over my "maybe these bad faith actors have a point somehow because there sure are a lot of them and maybe the subtext has substance" sense to "nope, too lazy to learn, not worth the time and energy."

Ngl, I'm half-contemplating dropping this degree and just begin writing or making videos about things I wish could be understood better. Or build things that help people and achieve my goals. It's just that the "Plan B for self-preservation" part of that ideal still has to be covered.

Finished with my AX 2025. Been doing this for 10 years and the past ones have been one of best times I've had just wandering around. Sure, this con has its issues and memes and growing pains, but the average experience, has been smoothed out and there's more variety compared to pre-covid.

Ngl, it does make me uncomfortable seeing Gen AI being considered without nuance in my MLIS lectures. I get the core principle of being open to new and emerging technologies, but this one carries the cost of ignorance of the kind of damage it causes and has been causing despite good intentions.

Finally got some time again to work on the Yakuaru rework. Looks like I can't avoid JS if I wanna implement an okay anti-spam measure. It works pretty well though. Now to work out checks and catches for duplicate entries.

I've lived a life in another country deeply enough to take in its vibes, and it still surprises me how America's prevailing motivator is fear. Whatever it is, good or bad, but mostly bad, there's usually an undercurrent of fear that causes people to double down like no tomorrow.

Ending 45, 150 hours in. I bumbled through the funny/weird routes first because I had a feeling this was gonna hit hard. It did. What a ballsy game. This game really will stay with me for a long time and I still have tons of endings to do. XD

MLIS courses start again. I'm still iffy if I'm gonna through with it. The last sem really drove home why the academe ain't for me. Same ideals, but different approaches and philosophies, really. But let's see. Still too early to decide.

Two routes down in Hundred line (the gag routes) and I finally stumbled into the Killing Game route. XD Good timing because some offhandedly mentioned stuff and events in there scaffolded the setup here while also making the payoff more palpable.

Looking at Shuten Order, I'm loving that they're advertising the routes. That's partly because of the gimmick I suppose, but if this is their swing at advancing the VN genre, I'm game. They have a solid engine to do that with as well.

Been playing Hundred Line longer than I thought I would. Really solid game. Will likely 100% it at this point, but what really kept me locked in is it respects your time. It's a lot, it knows it, and it gives you tools to reduce the friction of grinding, or eliminate it entirely.

This academic writing course really did a number on my mental health. Lol. I can write well, and the constraints set made sense. But I simply didn't agree with how restrictive it is, turned in a paper I'm not happy with to get a decent grade, and my brain made sure I'd regret it. XD

Been feeling this strong compulsion to do something good with my life. Leave a lasting legacy, if you will. I don't know what it is. I just know how it feels and whatever I'm doing now ain't it.

Oh right. I have to figure out an anti-spam/bot method for site submissions. I really want to cut out outside dependencies so no captcha unless it's self-hosted, but any lightweight, simple-but-effective validation method will do.

These days I think it's pretty wild that I'm living in the midst of this insanity, but I imagine it was the same back then for my parents. Different freedoms. Different constraints. Same problems. That's probably why it's frustrating. Nothing's changed. But people and mindsets have.

Ngl, I think what's messing me up with this masters course is how tedious it is just to access information. As an advocate of free access to information, I understand why it may cost something because capitalism, but accessing them shouldn't be like pulling teeth.

Yay. Finally carved out time to port Yakuaru over to sql and it's a success! Even fixed some ordering issues it had. But that's the easy part. The more important feature is the ability to add entries from the site itself and that's... hmm, I still have to figure that out. XD

As a bilingual, there really are words that transcend words. They're translatable, yes, and the meaning comes across perfectly in the right context. But it just ain't right. The sound doesn't carry the same energy. The mouthfeel isn't there. It doesn't feel right and it sucks. XD

Almost finally caught up again with life stuff. Planning to play more Kai since the EN release got announced, get the subtitle archive up to season (2.5 seasons to go), migrate yakuaru to sql (integration hell), and make more progress in fan TL project. Yup. Still too busy. XD

Uh... I wasn't ready for job luck to strike twice in one day (or too soon since I have catching up to do) but I now have a part time and a potential TL gig. XD

Moved my websites to a much more powerful mini server to handle requests and queries a little better, so I'm turning on public exports again to see if it can handle the crawler traffic that comes every once in a while... and the next couple of sql databases I'm putting in when I get to them. XD

Last day at this job. Regardless of the reason, I always find these moments of personal failure. Reminds me of how incompatible I am with most "normal" environments, try as I might to look away and fit in. Not this time. I left because I stayed true to myself and I'm glad I did.

Writing a Literature Review for an assignment and it feels weird. Hated doing these back then as I got majorly stuck for months on my Bachelor's thesis. Well, did this in a day (rushed it since I forgot XD) but I'm okay with my output, barring instructor expectations.

It's so funny. You often read in books moments where one has to stand up alone against what's wrong and wonder if that's real and how one manages after that. Well, it is real, it felt like second nature to me, it's cathartic, and I'm utterly stressed beyond my limits.

Y'know... after mulling over the point of the Yakuaru sqlite migration, I think I should go all the way and do a full server db switch. It won't be self-contained anymore, but it'll be what I originally wanted it to be, a true crowdsourced database that can accept entries in real-time.

Time to adapt the yakuaru backend with the sql db. Most things work right away except sorting, which might require a rework or repurpose of the current method since that's db-agnostic to begin with.

Migrating Yakuaru data to sqlite was a success. Glad I did this as I've had an irrational fear of sql databases that I had to overcome by coding the migration myself and now I know this makes a lot of the work querying, adding, updating so much easier. I can even make an API for it.

Lord help me. I really am working under a techbro. Now they're training someone who barely knows anything to use AI tools.

Nice. Migrating the json database to sqlite wasn't the nightmare I thought it would. But it does take some work since I'm unfurling and repackaging terms into a different and more scalable schema that should still work the same way on the frontend.

Looks like I'll have to learn some sql trickery to replicate how yakuaru references and pulls data from its current json iteration. Good. The db was a modified version of the original schema that didn't do nested jsons. It was not pretty and I guess it's a more manageable pain in sql at least.

I often wonder if it's worth living in a world that continues to deny the kinds of happiness I seek and trample the ideals I hold. Yes, because they're worth fighting for. And for all of my life, that's reason enough to stop looking away and to keep going.

Also might rebuild yakuaru again to use an sql database. I realize that I can definitely make my life easier by using an API to add/update entries, but that involves converting the json database. That format was useful when I started but now it's just painful to work with because it's too big. XD

Felt rather depressed today so I went and did more changes to SubArchivist's parser/uploader so it's less fiddly. Now I want to refactor it for further improvments. XD Also, Winter 2024 is all done. Thinking once I'm caught up I'll backtrack to 2019 and older.

Fired up the SubArchivist subtitle archive train once more. Now on the 2024's while I slowly iterate on the code so it can be done entirely via API since I still have to manually update the titles and upload the images. Descriptions are done now but images might be more complex.

Waiting for the flight home, which got delayed longer than my projected layover for the next flight. XD Coming back here really is the best decision I've made. I'm happy. Also the worst for my health and backlog now that everything's catching up now. XD

Arrived at the Philippines. Tired as hell from a 21 hour flight grind. Just wanted to sleep. Then I went to the mall and I'm alive again. I genuinely miss this mall culture. All vibes. Pure chaos.

Layover in Korea. Skipped Dec 8 entirely. XD

On a flight to PH... to settle a dare and bet I had with myself before I had to leave back then. XD I guess that's why I feel so calm despite everything. Right now, this is exactly where I ought to be and where I want to be, and rarely do those two agree.

Back to CSS styling. Got a bit overwhelmed even with a framework, but a short break does wonders and I've mostly worked out how to go about it.

Lol. Totally forgot today's my birthday, of all years. XD Usually on top of it timezone-wise. Technically it is tomorrow on this side of the world. Good year and the fact that I forgot about it is poetic in a way.

I've spent a good part of the year building a web server infrastructure that started as a fun project, but turned into quite an extension of my life that I can access and rely on wherever I am. So far it's been good, but the true test is when I go on my trip next month.