Happy new year everyone! I'm really hoping 2026 will be the year I start to really engage with my creativity. There's hope for that, now that I'm voluntarily demoted, and no longer drowning in stress 🙂. Oh and hopefully finally buying my first house. Here's to a better 2026. 🍻

Kinda sad that I'm working the next two days. First year in a *long* time that's been the case. But: 1. I'm low on holiday days this time, and b) It's the first year in many where I haven't been absolutely *desperate* for the extended break. Don't worry - I won't work hard, if I can avoid it 😛

Watched the original Jurassic Park again - not seen it in a very long time. I must've seen it a hundred times, and it *still* gets the heart racing at times. So damn good.

I've been reflecting on last weekend. I see my aunt usually only once a year, around Christmas. She's the only one left from my mum's side of the family. She's very loving, intelligent, and interesting... but holy shit is she of a different generation. She's *extremely* opinionated and stubborn.

Huh, I just realised something. When some people meet up after a while apart, and make remarks like "you've changed your hair" (not to me, of course, I have spikes, not hair), I've always thought "how on earth do you remember that?" I've just realised how.

Yaaaay happy winter solstice y'all, only getting brighter from now on..!

I wish I knew why VRC sometimes makes me withdraw. It's quite a strong feeling of disconnecting. If I knew, maybe I could counteract it somehow. It often leaves me feeling down the rest of the night. I feel I'm much better IRL, actually, which is... unexpected.

Jesus Christ. I'd just finished watching a YouTube video on my TV, and when it finished, I literally said out loud "that's enough of that", and turned off the TV. I then immediately picked up my phone, and caught myself reaching for the YouTube app. *metaphorically throws phone at the wall*

One of my colleagues is doing that "messaging one line at a time" thing. I'm about to start replying and I see him typing again. Stop. Receive. Me about to start. See him typing again. Stop. Receive. Me about to start... 8 messages, I think he's finally done. *starts actually reading his messages*

Hilarious. I've not used twitter for years, and I'm now finally going to deactivate my accounts. I'm now getting an infinite loop when I try to download my data, and I see others have the same issue. Almost like they don't want you to.

Today I caught up with old uni friends. Some of them very much empathise with the stress I experienced these past 2 years. I'm really proud of myself for requesting that demotion. I genuinely think it's the dream of many developers who've found themselves in management roles, but hating it.

Do you ever experience this, where you suddenly catch yourself in the mirror and kinda jumpscare yourself, "oh I look like that"? I'm not talking about being unhappy with how you look, more just... I dunno. You kinda look different to how you feel?

I wish I was more comfortable sharing things I like. Things like music tracks/albums/artists, movie/game trailers, hobbies, stuff like that. I always get too nervous and overthink it. "They won't care" "What if they don't like it?" "What might this say about me?" Insecurity is fun.

Last night, in VR, we chatted about aphantasia again. It's always interesting to compare people's experiences, but it always leaves me feeling kinda... defective. Like almost everyone else has a super power except me. Like I'm living life in black & white. It's very frustrating.

Wednesday starts: "Still 3 more days of this..?" I was thinking back to my last full-time job. It was in an office, 5 days a week. Hours were fairly long, yes it was stressful at times, but it was also fun. I don't remember feeling "damn, weeks are long... why am I doing this again?"

The new beaky Sea Devil suits are gorgeous... If only eh. I probably know some of the people who worked on them.

I have a bunch of saved searches on a casting site, that will email me if any matching roles are posted. Things like alien, werewolf, monster, creature, prosthetic, mask. But too many people use phrases like "he masks his true feelings" or "he's alienated" way too often, so many false positives 🙁

Our tech director has this amazing ability to write a long post clarifying something, describing the same thing in multiple (inconsistent) ways, only to end up confusing the matter even more...

I'm in denial that Christmas is only 3 weeks away. I guess it's technically true that if I put off thinking about it long enough, it will go away...

I'm quite new to Macs, for work. They're fine, but definitely overrated. One thing that annoys me is the inconsistent windowing behaviour. App might close on clicking red X. Might not. App might require closing via menu or Cmd Q. Might not. Why does minimising duplicate the app icon on the taskbar?

In a long work call at the moment, camera and microphone off. I stopped paying attention - it's now over an hour (and still going). Scary moment though: "Durandal, do you want to look into that?" Me: Oh shit, er, I wasn't listening, um... "Yeah, sure, I could do that" 😬

I swear to f*cking god that most of the houses I'm looking at have bloody conservatories, shoehorned into a tiny garden. My budget really isn't that high- unless I want to live in a shoebox (I don't), I *have* to relocate. I have no use for a conservatory. I'd much rather have a bigger garden. Grr.

Bluesky logging me out of the android app every day or so is really starting to piss me off...

Silly little resin keyring that makes me smile.

Jump scared by "SCROTUM" while browsing Amazon Prime...

Gaaaah, what have you done to my beautiful application... I wrote this large webapp several years ago for my company, entirely solo. It was written mainly for one industry that never started using it, so it's been sat unused for a while. But it was super clean, logical, and it worked well.

Don't you just love it when you meet someone, and they say "I've been really unwell recently, it's really lingered and I'm still recovering... but I'm no longer contagious!" How do you know? Lo and behold, I'm starting to get minor symptoms today. What a surprise.

I'm currently trying to build a new raptor head in Blender that's a bit more expressive (for VRC and a mask), using my Telegram stickers as inspiration (a selection below)... and I'm getting frustrated. It just doesn't look raptory, and I don't know why.

I've been officially registered with estate agents for... *checks notes*... just 4-and-a-bit weeks. I've had several calls asking if I'm still looking. Do they really expect me to have either found somewhere, or given up, in only a few weeks...?!? Yes I'm still looking, keep doing your job!

I've decided I'm not going to use YouTube at all today. I waste far too much time there. This might be surprisingly difficult, we'll see.

Is it weird that I'm kinda envious of my colleague who's been off sick for 3 days? Damn parents get all the perks! 😛

The phrase "creatively malnourished" popped into my head earlier today... and I've not been able to get it out of my mind. Seems very fitting.

In case you don't know, garden centres usually have little stone/metal figurines. Sometimes have little dragons (I have one) but usually woodland creatures. I've been on the lookout for anything dino-like for a while, not expecting anything. Today, I, er, found a sorta life-size metal velociraptor.

I've been sleeping unusually badly for about a week. I don't have anything obvious on my mind, but I'm struggling to fully relax, and stay asleep. I'm not sure why. I don't have any obvious new major anxieties... Tired.

It kinda bothers me that one of our front-end developers, who specialises in FE dev... doesn't seem to have attention to detail when it comes to styling. I'm not talking pixels: * Columns not being centred * Missing horizontal rules * Different fonts * Missing padding * Looking a bit shit 😕

It's such a cliche. I'm middle-aged, and I messed up my knee by getting off the sofa wrong. It's been bad for about 4 weeks. I'm so frustrated, because I don't know what more I could be doing. I have a PT, work out 3 times a week with mobility/strength. I'm not overweight, flexible, and eat well.

Watching Jurassic World: Rebirth. It's remarkable just how little I care about all the characters.

As someone who definitely leans more towards introversion, I really do think the concept of "paired programming" (particularly remotely) not only doesn't work, but is in fact utter bullshit, is super-awkward, and is less productive than just giving me the space to work it out myself...

Oh shit, I forgot, it's Halloween tonight! Almost time to rush preparing my dinner early, so I can desperately get out of my house, and hideout in the pub until the hordes of kids go home and leave me in peace...

I'm on BARQ because... well... I dunno really, it felt like the thing to do at Pawsome. On the notifications panel, if someone likes an image, tapping the thumbnail loads nothing. Worse - some of the thumbnails are downright broken, so I can't tell which image they liked. Anyone else get that?

If I've learned anything from my limited time house-hunting, it's this. There's a lot of insane houses. Not in a good way. Houses where the layout makes no sense. Where there's a driveway between houses that's too narrow to open car doors. Random zigzags in the walls.

For the last few years (in particular) I've told myself "I have no imagination". I think I've completely internalised that belief. My default response to anything imaginative is "no" so quickly it almost doesn't register. I shut it down immediately. I've even had therapy specifically for this.

I have almost the whole day free for creative fun! *sits on the sofa in silence, uninspired, reluctantly reaching back to fill his hours with mindless YouTube, keenly aware of the inexorable passing of time to his inevitable death*

Doing lots of Adulting today. May need to offset it this evening somehow.

Been a weird week. 1. First week demoted to senior dev, and part of a new team. It is weird, but I definitely feel less stressed already. 2. Got mortgage-in-principle done, had a minor breakdown, now ready to move forwards. 3. Posted fox photos, got a lot of love. 4. Is the week *still* not over..?

Now for something a bit more fun, finally - v2 fox! In many ways, this is much better than my previous one. But in some ways, it's worse, and there's still areas I'm unhappy with. Still, a good learning experience. I will make another head on this system, but I'm not 100% sure what yet...

I've finally had a mortgage in principle generated, so I know how much I can borrow for a house. I earn decent money, a fair bit above average. The max I can borrow is slightly less than the average house price. This is just depressing. Oh well. No choice but to make it work...

When I'm bored, and don't want to vegetate on the sofa quite yet, I do my banking. I'm not joking. I update my spreadsheets and pay off anything on my credit card. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee

Today I took a bunch of photos of my new fox v2 head, with contact lenses and makeup. Aaaaaand... ... I think I'm going to do it all over again tomorrow, I'm not particularly happy with them. Damn shadows!

I get the distinct impression that the vast majority of homes in the UK, nobody actually *wants* to live in. "yeah, it's really awkward, terrible parking, and far too small, but I don't have a choice, it's all that's available and all I can afford"