undertalecheckpoint

[undertalecheckpoint]

16 July, 2025: Entry #78

Song: You Idiot

Well, every day since Friday for me has been this: wake up, work on the new Past Life video for as long as I can, sleep. And other stuff too, I guess. The thing is, I want this video to be really good, because it’s going to be a lot of people’s first impressions. However, I also want to get it out quickly, because if I don’t, there’s literally not going to be any impressions to make. Turns out, I chose the worst of both worlds. I spent a day making the first 1 minute of the video, and then a few more days hurrying to make the rest of the videos before the episodes become irrelevant. And then I’m doing this all for just a couple thousand views… But then I remind myself I’m doing this because I think it’s fun. But… it’s not really fun anymore… I need to make it fun again. But how?

It's 11 PM and I don't want a Thursday entry so I’m just going to end it here

[undertalecheckpoint]

9 July, 2025: Entry #77

Song: 077 - ASGORE

Nothing much this week. I drew Sebastian Solace and it turned out alright, so that’s something. The next life series is starting the day after tomorrow, but I’ve been trying to make a ‘previous seasons in a nutshell’ video to try to get back into the swing of things but it just wasn’t interesting and I kept procrastinating and instead I made a video of me playing megalovania with glasses and some wine bottles. 

One last thing: a few weeks ago, I made a deal with my friend: they would finally get into Epic the musical, and I would finally get into Homestuck. I quickly realised that this deal was slightly uneven because they watched the entire musical in one day, so… Anyway, I had already read most of Act 1 earlier this year before kinda just giving up, but this time, I was determined to finish all 7 acts by the end of the summer. I’m on page (is that how you count these?) 757 right now. Y’know how in things like games, they have a gradual difficulty curve and they teach you the game mechanics slowly, or how in movies and books they tell you the background and context for everything? Yeah so Homestuck ignored all of that and threw literally everything at me in the beginning, which really made me think that I skipped over a really huge piece of exposition meaning that I spent most of my time trying to figure out how any of the mechanics work?? They then told me that none of that really gets explained, so… okay then? The story so far’s been mildly interesting, some moments were pretty fun, but then just now I got to the wayward vagabond’s section and, like, I really like them. They’re just a little guy! That’s stuck (?) underground (?) an indeterminate amount of time later in the third millennium (?) that can communicate to John (?) and the other three (?) I’ve literally seen them for about half an hour in total but I would go to great frigging lengths to protect them. Anyway that’s it for this week.!

[undertalecheckpoint]

2 July, 2025: Entry #76

Song: 076 - Bergentrückung

Addressing the elephant in the room: We are not on Youtube anymore. And by ‘we’, I mean me, because I don’t think any of the people who were with me in Youtube followed me here. That means that you, yes you, this is the very first time you have ever seen me. Helloo! Hope you stick around a bit for the rest of the journey. :) Also, if you’re seeing this out of context, please please pleeease read the pinned post to see what this is all about.

Continuing the entries like nothing ever happened, I’ve been doing the ‘daily’ art thing I set off on doing last week a bit inconsistently; right now, I’m only on Day 6 of drawing. On day 3, I drew some hands, using my own hands as reference, and how they turned out genuinely surprised me, like, they did not look half bad at all. I drew three hands, a normal view of the palm, a thumbs up, and an OK sign. The only one that looked a bit funny was the OK sign, because I started off with drawing the circle between the thumb and pointer finger, so I tried to kinda shape the two fingers around there before doing the three other fingers, so some of the segments of the thumb and pointer finger ended up being a bit too long. Anyway, on day 4 I followed a tutorial to draw a slightly fancy tree, and that one also just ended up being amazing I don’t know how I keep pulling this off but I do anyway on day 5 I followed another tutorial and tried to draw a landscape and it wasn’t that good. Yeah…

Today, I discovered the holy grail of basically every artist: Pinterest. Took me long enough to make an account, with all my friends constantly talking about something they saw on Pinterest and whatnot, but I signed up and immediately started browsing reference poses. I kept stumbling upon poses from mellon-soup (she’s also on Tumblr as I found out) and turns out she makes an absolutely ton of reference poses thank you so much!! I used this one and spent like two and a half hours drawing it all out. I started out by trying to kinda copy the pose before working on the cloak (I know, I should’ve drawn the mannequin first or something). Then I added the hands, hair (which actually looked pretty good), clothes, and face myself, which didn’t look too bad. I don’t know who I was trying to draw here (a lot of the Pinterest comments mentioned Tiresius, which I considered), so it ended up being… just a random face, I guess. Not that bad, though.

I do have a secret to admit… I've been drawing all this with mechanical pencils. Yeah… I have a ton of unsharpened #2 pencils lying around, but zero pencil sharpeners. And I just haven’t needed a pencil sharpener for ages because I’ve been using mechanical pencils for everything??? So now I need to get a pencil sharpener. 

Honestly, through my first week of learning how to draw, I was bulldozing my way through every single art tutorial I could find. I did keep coming back to one channel, though, which was Drawlikeasir. I really like his way of explaining things and sense of humour.

Oh yeah also the next life series is coming and im procrastinating making the ‘life series in the nutshell’ video i need to make

Anyway, see you next week for more (hopefully not) hurried 10 PM rambles!

[undertalecheckpoint]

22 June, 2025: Entry #75

Song: 075 - Barrier

You wake up.

You look around at your dimly lit room, as pale ribbons of moonlight stream through your blinds. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you can slowly begin to make out the wooden corners of your bed frame, then your plushies, most of which you’ve had since childhood. Then, your cluttered desk across the room, with pencils and papers still strewn across it, a project you were going to finish tomorrow. You see posters hanging on the left wall your bed is pressed against, surrounding your window… A clock hangs on the far wall, its rhythmic ticking comforting you, even if it’s too dark to make out what time it is.

Your eyes and mind are still very much groggy, having just woken up in the middle of the night. As you regain your senses, you realise what day it is. It’s the 20th of June. Tomorrow (or today?) you have that party to attend, and then all those summer plans and projects still to come… You prop yourself up and try to look out the window to get a better sense of how late at night  or early in the morning it is. The dim moonlight is a fair bit brighter than your room now, but your eyes quickly adapt. 

Through the slits of your blinds, you can see outside, a world beyond your bedroom. Wanting to see more, you lift the blinds up and stick your head under them, pressing your cheek against the cool glass. The driveway and side garden is on your front, with a chipped fence dividing your house from your neighbour’s behind that. On the left, if you crane your head, you can see a good chunk of your small street, separated but not too far from the hustle and bustle of the main road. A grand orange tree looms over the sidewalk, the trunk twisting and snaking its way from your neighbour’s yard. You remember fondly when you and your friends would gather under that same tree and try to jump and grab oranges - only to come up a few inches short every time, before the neighbour saw what you were doing and grabbed them for you themself.

You open the window. Immediately, a rush of cool air blows past you and mixes with the lukewarm air in your bedroom. Summers here were quite hot, as it were. The gust bites at your nose and brings a few tears to your eyes, but you welcome it nonetheless. A flurry of sound enters your ear. The ambient sounds of the night surround you. The sounds of crickets cricketing, the rustling of leaves by some late night birds, and the hum of the city, distant but persistent. 

A pickup truck enters the street, rumbling as it drives over the rocky road, the tools left in the back clattering. Its headlights illuminate large swaths of what’s ahead, bathing a small sliver of the world in light and colour. You recognise the truck as your neighbour’s from across the street. You remember when he used to drive the neighbour’s kids with his own to the park. Its gravelly rumble gets louder as it enters your view, before slowly fading as it slips from your sight and into the darkness of the night. A few seconds later, you can hear the sound of the truck engine winding down and the jangle of keys before that too fades away.

Suddenly, a dog, maybe one street down, maybe ten, howls. A lone, piercing howl echoes throughout the city, dimming out every other sound by comparison. The dog howls again, and again. Then, another dog joins in, this one sounding even further away somehow. Then another. And another. Until seemingly every dog in the city is howling and barking and yelping together, forming a chorus of howls in the night. And while you might have considered this a cacophony during the day, now, in the middle of night, it seems almost harmonic. So you embrace it. For about half a minute, you sit there, looking outside while the dogs continue their version of a lullaby. As you keep looking outside, you can notice so many more things that you haven’t paid attention to normally. Little droplets of dew on flowers and plants, one uneven plank in your neighbour’s fence, and most of all… stars. Not just the one or two you would see when the sun set, but dozens of stars, littering the sky and shining down on your street. You haven’t seen this many stars since moving to the city, but now, in the dead of night, when every light is off, you finally can. 

Eventually, after the last dog had uttered their last howl and fell back asleep and silence returned to the night air, you draw your head back from the open window, leaving the nighttime world behind in favour of returning to your room and your bed. Looking around your room again in the slightly brighter blue glow coming from outside, you see your half-finished project still waiting for you on your desk. Your calendar with many dates circled and things written in red marker. The clock, which you could now barely make out to say 4:15. You think about all these things you have ahead of you, the things you are yet to do in the days, months, and indeed years to come. And as you lie down, the distant sounds of commotion and the city starting up for another day faintly entering your room, you think to yourself. Maybe all that can wait. Maybe the duties and events and responsibilities can wait for tomorrow. Maybe I can look outside the window just a bit more.

And so you do.

————

This is the beginning of the end of a long journey. 75% of the way through gives some sort of imminence, but then I realised that we have an entire 6 months left to our journey. So, in some ways, we still have a lot left to go. So I just want to reflect on what has happened since the beginning, and what’s left. I’ve been through a birthday, a car crash, two years of school, and a lot of shenanigans. I’ve also learned the basics of this whole Youtube thing, gotten the hang of things like Davinci Resolve, After Effects, and Premiere Pro, and learned more about myself and what I like and want to do, and really about what this is all about. But, there’s still a lot left to go, in the next 6 months and after. I’ve got another year of school in this journey, then college, then a job… Even though this past year and a half has felt like ages for me, I still have, like, 80 something percent of my life left to live. And honestly? I think that’s enough. 

I am genuinely a lot more confident about my life and where I’m going, not just because of how much I’ve improved by now, but how much I can improve and how much determination I have to keep improving. Yep, it all comes back to determination. 

A few days ago, on Summer Solstice (Oneshot reference?) I played Firewatch. I bought it during the Steam spring sale and never played it, until I realised I could save it for the first day of summer. Even though I am definitely no stranger to the game (I watched Markiplier’s playthrough… then Jack’s… then everyone else’s… the the theories and reviews)... when I played it, it was still really refreshing and… just amazing, really. It’s a wonderful game; I really do recommend everyone to play it. I just finished Day 1 and am gonna play it on and off throughout the summer. 

Another thing I started is drawing every day. As you know, I am not a very good artist, or even a good artist, or even an artist. Which is weird, because most of my friends are artists, and also because most of the fandoms I’m in are like, mostly artists. Games like Pressure have tons of fanart, don’t get me started on how many Murderdrones OCs I see when scrolling Tumblr, and EPIC the musical literally depends on animators to make animatics to bring the story to life. So… yeah, I feel like a bit of an outlier not knowing how to draw. So, starting earlier this week, I started drawing every day. The first day, I binged beginner drawing guides and tips for about an hour while drawing and redrawing the same damn circle, before finally deciding to keep it for once and starting to draw my own face. At first, it felt really weird, but as I kept adding details and refining it I got into the flow pretty well. It took me about another hour to finish the drawing and to stop changing little things every time I said it was ‘done’, but I think the end result looked pretty okay with where I’m at in art. It still has that little bit of uncanny to it, like one of those Greek statues you see at a museum (the best and weirdly accurate way to describe how it looked).

The second day, I drew one of my many OCs (all of which have even either been in my head or written in stories). Their name is Coda. They’re an astronaut robot… guy, and they are my oldest OC. The mechanical bits were both easier and harder to draw (somehow) than what I did the previous day, but it ended up working out. I also… drew a hand. A single hand. And that took more time than drawing the face somehow. Hands… I can tell they’re going to be a problem. However, I think another problem of  mine is that I like to do things in one or two takes. This entire entry, including the story, is all written in one take, no editing for the most part. When I’m writing a longer and more complicated story, I tend to make a storyboard first before going in and writing bits and doing a second pass and fixing things, but for most things a single take works. And that’s a problem for at, where you have to have a basic structure before starting to add anything. 

Anyway, that’s where I’m at today. Pretty good, but I still have a lot to do. And I have the determination to do it. Once again, thank you for reading this whenever and wherever you are, whether you’ve been here the whole time or it’s your first entry. Even though we might never see each other again, even though we don’t know each other, I’ll be with you for 26 more weeks. Happy summer solstice, happy summer, and remember…

Have determination.

Let’s continue our journey.

[undertalecheckpoint]

17 June, 2025: Entry #74

Song: 074 - Small Shock

Summer just started!! We had some normal last day of school shenanigans, y’know, the usual, dumpster diving in the school dumpster, finding a broken catapult in the dumpster, carrying it out and trying to rebuild it while recruiting other people to work on it, realising that it’s unsalvageable and breaking it down for parts, using the launcher part of the catapult… Anyway, from Monday-Wednesday, I went on some really long Geocaching walks. And by long, I mean 5 miles on Monday and Tuesday and 15 miles on Wednesday. Yeah, on Wednesday I went on a 5 and a half hour walk. And from those three days, I got 18 finds and a lot more DNFs. Also, I’m at 100 finds now!!! Yeah!!! :D Anyway, I guess I’m starting my summer arc now. I downloaded Pikmin Bloom on Thursday (a few days too late) and immediately fell in love with the game. Look at them! They’re so cute!! And this one has hair, and this one has ears and I can feed them and - Where was I? Right, summer. So, on Friday, I went to a pool party of one of my old friends, and I met a bunch of new people there. Fun stuff!

Anyway, taking a hard right, I finally switched away from Google Chrome. Yeah, so, funny story, Chrome isn’t the best for privacy… or RAM usage… or, anything, really. And even worse, I kept using it knowingly. So last week, I just randomly decided to switch. And so I started researching. And oh my god I fell down a really deep rabbit hole. Firefox, Brave, Edge (I was desperate), Opera… I started with Opera GX because of its resource limiter feature, before realising that the style was… a choice. Anyway, because I actually go outside, I decided to switch to something else - first to Brave, then to Firefox, and even Edge, believe it or not. But they all lacked something or other - not good enough tab groups, lack of customisation, just looking funny - until I stumbled upon Vivaldi. wait, isn’t that a musician guy? I heard of it because of its features and a bunch of customisation options, and by this point, it was, like, my 5th browser download of the day. The moment I opened it, I was hit with the orange and white, which was… a choice, but I opened settings to change it and I was immediately hit with an entire wall of settings. Yeah, they were not kidding about the customisation. I remember scrolling through the entire page as I grew more concerned. How did the developers manage this??? Anyway, I spent the next 30 minutes fiddling with settings and customising the toolbar and looking up how to change this tiny thing or add extensions or add these shortcuts-

What else happened… Oh! LingoTWOW! Yeah, it… happened. Yeah. Uh… And Grian’s Life Series teaser! That’s something! I’m making a little thing about it in After Effects, and it’s… a lot more difficult than I thought. Anyway, I’m still learning Premiere Pro… I swear there’s something important to talk about…

Oh yeah.

DELTARUNE!!!!! (I forgot to mention this last time!!)

I actually haven’t played Chapters 3 and 4 yet, because my friend is streaming them playing it to the silly friend group. I was off social media for a while trying to  keep myself spoiler free, and it was… mildly successful. I kept stumbling upon images of a certain TV head character with a long nose… Anyway, the first stream was a few days ago, and we all got a voice a character. Someone got Ralsei, someone got Susie, etc. My friend, the one playing, had a certain character in mind for me… one he said was ‘literally me.’ Yep, I think you can guess who at this point. :P Anyway, by now, we’ve gotten most of the way through Chapter 3 so far and… I LOVE TV!!! (x99) I love this guy. Too bad he has abandonment issues. And is in doomed yaoi.

I’d think that was a pretty good entry, no? See you next week for the big 75!

[undertalecheckpoint]

9 June, 2025: Entry #73

Song: 073 - The Choice

So, remember that Geocaching event that’s happening this month? Me neither, but apparently they released a multicache alongside it. So I walked for the better part of an hour to do the multi before getting to the final waypoint, before a random man randomly pulled up to me, rolled down their window, and started talking to me. “You looking for it too?” First thing I noticed was his hat. It was a Geocaching hat. All I could say was, “You’re… a geocacher!” And he said “yeah”, but he had that face where you could tell he was understating something. So anyway, he got out of his car and went to the spot where the cache was located and just casually said, “I’ve been looking for this one for a while now. My friend is the cache owner, and he’s been giving me hints, but I just can’t find it.” And then he gave me his Geocaching username. Turns out, he’s a guy with 20,000 finds and a thousand hides himself. (And I found a few of them!) And his friend, the one who hid this multicache and is hosting the event… has 50,000 finds. So yeah, I recognised his name and I was like, “damn, how do my 75 finds compare to this guy’s 20 thousand?”, but it turns out he was actually pretty chill about it. So anyway, we spent the next two hours looking for the cache (it was by some railroad tracks), while the cache owner was giving us hints. Here’s the thing, that cache owner is notorious for having really tricky and clever hides. And… we ended up not finding it, but honestly it was really rewarding just meeting another Geocacher for the first time, and someone as locally-famous-in-a-niche-hobby as him himself. After we couldn’t find it, he took me to a nearby location where he was hiding another cache that he would release during the Geocaching event - and I got to beta test it! So yeah, I’m really looking forward to meeting him and a bunch of other people during that event in a few weeks.

[undertalecheckpoint]

1 June, 2025: Entry #72

Song: 072 - Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!

Oh, and what was I going to talk about…?

Oh yeah, I got a new PB! 

This was the scramble: F2 L2 B2 R2 U' R2 D2 U2 R2 B2 D B' D U2 L U2 R' D' U B U2

Unfortunately, I couldn’t recreate the solve, but I do know that I got lucky with F2L and a PLL skip. The time ended up being 14.11… but in my haste after realising that I got a PLL skip, I immediately stopped the timer… and didn’t align the U face. So I got a +2. 16.11. Hey, a PB’s still a PB, right? …right? Oh yeah, and then I turned around and started doing 5x5, and on my third try got another PB of 2:25.19. Yeah, so I just randomly got better at cubing that day; I can definitely pair edges without stopping now. And for F2L, it turns out that I improved so much that I only suck a normal amount at it. My cross is around 3-4 seconds, F2L is ~12 seconds, and OLL and PLL together take ~10 seconds, for about a 26 second average. I did manage to get a ao5 of 23 yesterday, though.

What’s next… Oh yeah, I’m planning stuff for summer (it’s coming quickly!) A few weeks ago, me and my friends did two sessions of in-person D&D at a nearby park, and it didn’t go as bad as I thought… We’re planning to maybe do more over the summer to actually get the campaign going. Oh yeah, and I wrote the script for a Game Changer episode I’m going to host the next time we do another in-person D&D. If you don’t know Game Changer, it’s basically a gameshow where the host psychologically tortures the contestants in a different way each episode. If you know, you know.

I’ve also been practicing my belt a bit, one of the new songs I’ve been singing is ‘Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue’ from ‘Fun Home’ where they… welcome you to their house on Maple Avenue. Well, there’s more than that, but whatever. I was basically in my bathroom recording takes and listening to them in between looking up tutorials on Youtube for about an hour. I don’t know what my neighbours were thinking during all of that… Anyway, one of my takes sounded genuinely, really impressive, so I did that thing where you bounce on the heels of your feet and tense everything in your body, y’know, normal ADHD stuff. I actually think I’m starting to sing pretty well!! Maybe one day I can be a real theatre kid…?

Oh yeah, and I’m trying to stuff as much information about Premiere Pro and After Effects as possible into my head. Am I doing too much…?

[undertalecheckpoint]

27 May, 2025: Entry #71

Song: 071 - Undertale

I’m currently making plans for the summer. No vacation this year, unfortunately. There’s a bunch of things I want to do, and I don’t know if I have enough time to do them all. Here’s a few of them:

-Learn After Effects and Premiere Pro (so I can do the new life series whenever that comes out)

-Learn Blender and Unity (maybe try game development?)

-Learn FL studio (music)

-Learn how to draw (I’m still not good at drawing)

-Cube, conlang, geocache, etc.

-Write?

I’d like to worldbuild more, so I’d maybe either draw or write something quickly about the world every day or two. Also, I learned about a Geocaching event happening near me next month, so I’m going to try and show up! It’ll be my first time actually meeting other Geocachers… Maybe I’ll get some tips? Also, I took a small month long break from cubing, but I just got back to cubing a few days ago. The first solve… I forgot everything. I almost forgot how to do the cross… Yikes. Anyway, after doing some untimed practice solves to re-get used to holding a cube, my times started returning back to normal at ~27 seconds. Weirdly enough 5x5 solves after a month of not doing it felt more familiar. Almost broke my PB somehow. Anyway I can pair edges almost without stopping now.

Next entry will actually be on time (finally)!

oh yeah i should also say something about this some being undertale undertale

this song is undertale - undertale

[undertalecheckpoint]

22 May, 2025: Entry #70

Song: 070 - Long Elevator

Quick update because this is the third week I’m writing late. Oh yeah, did I mention I got eliminated from LingoTWOW? Well, I got eliminated from LingoTWOW. Yeah, sucks. I guess wordplay skills from songwriting don’t really transfer if you only have 10 words. Anyway, since I think this is a fun twist on minitwows, I’ve decided to begin supervoting on each episode since then (there’s already been two episodes between my elimination and now)

One game that I’ve been really getting into recently is Blue Prince. I’ve been watching Wade’s playthrough of it (I’m currently on part 16). It’s the perfect video to eat to. About the game itself, the mechanics are really refreshing, and the layers and layers of puzzles - I think I’ve found a new interest. Thing is, though, I haven’t bought the game mostly because I feel like I wouldn’t have the patience myself to play through the game, so I’m just resorting to watching someone else play it. Anyway, yeah, I think it’s a really fascinating game. 

So yeah, that’s pretty much it this week. I should try to get more comfortable with writing in my own tone, right now it feels kinda forced…?

[undertalecheckpoint]

15 May, 2025: Entry #69

Song: 069 - For the Fans

Nice.

Anyway, AP tests are almost over for everyone. Meanwhile, I’m starting to learn Premiere Pro… which means I have to transition all of my projects in progress from Davinci Resolve to it.

Meanwhile, surprisingly, the Minecraft server is still going. We’re actually around day 1650 with it. My friends are working on some other base projects, and I’ve been revamping my base. Speaking of that, I should probably tell you what my base is. It’s carved into a mountain, because that’s apparently my thing. Normal cave setup inside - a big central cavern with rooms snaking around the mountain. The big cavern room is about 30*30 and around 60 blocks deep, which is actually kinda small for a megabase, but hey, I’m not building in Minecraft full time for a living. I’ve been working on and off between carving out the shape of the main cave and working on a bunch of the side rooms, where each one has its own use that still fits with the base lore/theme. 

Yeah I was gonna write more, but… yeah no.

[undertalecheckpoint]

9 May, 2025: Entry #68

Song: 068 - Death by Glamour

OH MY GOD I FORGOT TO WRITE AN ENTRY AND ITS ALMOST THE NEXT WEEK BECAUSE IVE BEEN PROCRASTINATING TO WRITE IT BECAUSE I HAVE NOTHING TO WRITE ABOUT AND NOW IM DOING A RUN ON SENTENCE

[undertalecheckpoint]

29 April, 2025: Entry #67

Song: 067 - Oh My...

I’ve been studying for my APs this week, so this will be a very short entry. Some random things on the top of my mind: I’m almost done with Be More Chill (the book), I’m getting around to liking Hold Them Down and Odysseus, I’ve been stuck on 68 geocache finds and it is killing me, and I’m laying out new plans for my base on the Minecraft server. (It’s still pretty active, by the way) Anyways, I think I can get a 5 pretty easily on one of my APs, but the other is a different story. I think I can get a 3 or 4 on it, though.

By the way, we’re 2/3rds through the entire journey! Here’s to the last third! :D

[undertalecheckpoint]

23 April, 2025: Entry #66

Song: 066 - Last Episode!

A few days ago, I finished all of EPIC the musical. This might be a hot take, but I think the Ithaca saga wasn’t that great. Granted, I haven’t had that much time for the songs to grow on me. In my opinion, The Challenge is pretty good, Hold Them Down is pretty catchy but the lyrics are just kinda… gross, Odysseus is kinda the opposite - it’s not really catchy, it’s more telling a story, and the final two are pretty good. I think it was meant more to resolve the story rather than be catchy or anything. Anyway, now I can say what my ten favourite songs are. Just a Man, Open Arms, Luck Runs Out, Puppeteer, There are Other Ways, No Longer You, Love in Paradise, Legendary, Dangerous, and I Can’t Help but Wonder. A few people have asked me my favourite saga, and I’m torn between Circe and Wisdom. All of the Circe songs are pretty good, I’d say solid A tier, but the thing is there’s just four of them. Wisdom has three S-tier songs, and Little Wolf and We’ll be Fine are A-tier. (I think We’ll be Fine is quite underrated!) The thing is, though… there’s no Hermes. The thing is, half the songs being catchy and unique is really impressive. Now, I could go around breaking down the music theory and how leitmotifs are used, but that’s for another week. Really though, I’m just glad I can be part of this silly community :D

Staying on the topic of musicals, one of my friend groups is getting really interested in Be More Chill. I’ve seen some of the songs pop up on my daylist before, specifically More Than Survive, A Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into, and Michael in the Bathroom. So, when I saw the actually book the musical was based on in a Little Free Library, I had to take it. And read it. Embarrassingly, this is, in fact, the first paper book I’ve read all year. Yikes… Anyways, my plan is to read through it and then see the slime tutorial to see how the story changes. I’m only halfway through right now, right after the big party. Already, I can tell that the musical added in the whole ‘Michael being left in the dark as Jeremy suddenly starts acting more attractive, so he’s having a mental breakdown in a bathroom’ thing, though it was in the book a bit. Maybe it’ll come back? 

Some smaller things: I went on a ten mile (!) walk on the weekend and found 7 new geocaches (and didn’t find a few others). I broke my 5x5 PB by quite a few seconds - 148.24 (broke the 2:30 barrier!) My plan is to get a sub-2 minute solve before July. For 3x3, I’ve been getting close to my PBs - quite a lot of low 20’s and even 19’s, but no PB. I lost a life in LingoTWOW somehow, even though I thought I had a pretty decent response :( That’s just how it goes sometimes. Finally, I finally got started on enigmatics. I’ll explain it next week. They’re puzzly - ARG thingies. 

Oh, and last week I went airsofting with around 10 friends for a birthday party. It was at a pretty big area outside with different areas sectioned off into maps. We started getting our equipment and loading our guns with BBs before putting our masks on and walking into our first map - just a normal warzone. The props were really convincing! Destroyed cars, broken container crates, and abandoned houses. Of course, since most of us hadn’t played airsoft before, we got shot. A lot. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, and I eventually got into the swing of things. Did get shot on my neck, though, which stung for a while. It was a lot more demanding than I’d thought, though. During my first round, I stayed at our team base, too scared to go anywhere. Then, I tried to shoot, but… nothing happened. I thought I was using it wrong, but, no, someone eventually saw that my gun was fully busted - I had to get it replaced. We played in different areas for a few hours with some small breaks in between. I actually got quite a few shots in on my friends! Also, the person who’s alway really shy and soft-spoken in the friend group randomly turned out to be a really good player. Like, they were getting everyone, and one of us expected it. Eventually, after we finished, I said that we should do things together more, and everyone agreed. We’re going airsofting again. Definitely not in the summer, though, the heat would kill us.

One last thing: Last week I did a bit of research and was able to get Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Premiere Pro. If you’re curious, search up GenP. Anyway, I am in graphic design and do have quite some experience with Adobe stuff (specifically Illustrator, I love Illustrator), but, y’know, don’t have them at home. Now I do, and they’re only slightly very laggy on my PC! I began messing around with AE (casually binged a few hours of AE tutorials) and learned how all those little effects that make videos just that much better are made. Specifically, I wanted to make kinetic typography, though. Specifically, the ‘We Both Reached For the Gun’ typography edit by Venushoyo. I know it’ll probably take at least a year or two to get to that level, but I am ready. My first project is a Waving Through a Window kinetic typography animation. I’m learning as I go, and after a few hours of work… I have an entire 9 seconds of animation! This is… going to be harder than I thought. 

I kept forgetting to write this entry, so of course, naturally, I churn out a 1000 word entry in one night by writing nonstop. See you next week! 

[undertalecheckpoint]

15 April, 2025: Entry #65So

Song: 065 - CORE

I’m making good improvements in cubing! I think my F2L has gotten a lot better, and I’m starting to develop some simple look-ahead. Now, I can focus on learning PLL, and then OLL. my best averages so far: 25.28 ao5, 25.77 ao12, 28.11 ao100. I can consistently get sub-30 now, when a 30-second solve used to be pretty quick a few weeks ago. I also did my 1000th solve on Cubedesk! However… I haven’t beaten my PB still. The scramble was just lucky on another level. Also, the 33x WR was just beaten two days ago… by an 8 year old. Maybe I’m too old for this. I didn’t really expect the record to be beaten this quickly. Still no sub-3, though.

For big cubes, I can do 4x4 edge pairing practically without pausing now, but on a 5x5 it’s a different story… An average 5x5 solve takes me a minute for the centres, 1:15 for edge pairing, and :45 for the 3x3 part. So 3 minutes on average. I think it’s pretty good. 

I watched a Minecraft Movie with, like 10 other people on Monday. It was actually better than I expected. The general consensus our group ended up with is that the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, so if you come in taking it seriously, you’ll end up feeling unsatisfied. It’s really just a silly movie about a video game. I enjoyed it personally, though there are some plot and pacing issues. I’m glad the movie’s doing well :) Today I went airsofting for a few hours with the same group. I came in with absolutely no expectations, but I would be understating it if I said it was really fun. It is. 

Some other notes: I’m finally listening to the Ithaca Saga this week, and I found my first premium Geocache! 

[undertalecheckpoint]

06 April, 2025: Entry #64

Song: 064 - CORE Approach

2^7 = 64. This- nah, just kidding.

Yeah, so turns out the Reddit April Fools’ Event this year was pretty short. Only lasted 1 and a half days. :/. In addition, there wasn’t really much I could do actively in the April Knights. Oh well…

Anyway, I’m improving my F2L by a bit. It’s now only ~15-20 seconds, so about 5 seconds per pair. Now it’s slightly less bad than how it used to be. Great! So, now I’m focusing on PLL again. Today I’ve drilled F and Ja perm (because their recognition is easy, so I’d figure it has the biggest benefit to learn first) and have memorised them well enough.

Geocaching wise, I’ve found two caches that have been evading me for a while. The first one is actually quite close to me. I always visit it while on other trips, and I always can’t find it. It’s along a plant nursery. Turns out, every single time I look for it for a few months now, I look at the floor… and can’t find it. Because it’s not on the floor, it’s on the top of the fence! So today, with slightly more geocaching knowledge than a few months ago, I walked up to it, spotted it from a mile away, and just grabbed it like that. Turns out, I’d look at the cache logs and see the cache shape and think it’s obviously in the ground (it’s not).

Anyway, the second cache is the very first one that I looked for. Two years ago, before this whole Undertale Checkpoint thing, I was out with some friends at night. I barely knew what Geocaching was, but went onto the website and realised that there was a cache down the road. We finished eating and went to go check it out. Obviously, we couldn’t find it, and after five minutes, left. Today, I came back to the same spot. I read the cache page fully and realised that the coordinates they gave me weren’t actually ground zero yet, and there was a waypoint I had to follow. The actual coordinates were on the other side of the road. Over there, I was staring at the street sign trying to find the cache, like it would just reveal itself eventually. The other logs said it was a magnetic micro and that it was quite high up… After a while, I just suddenly realised… it’s right there! So I grabbed it! It wasn’t actually that hard…

Oh yeah, I also tried subharmonic singing this week. It’s a technique to get really low bass notes, as in foghorn level notes. I was basically making weird sounds in my bathroom for about 30 minutes the other day. A few times, I actually got it for a second or two. Later on, I was actually able to hold a G1 for a few seconds! It wasn’t very clear or anything, but good enough for my first try! Does that mean my range went up an octave?

[undertalecheckpoint]

30 March, 2025: Entry #63

Song: 063 - It's Raining Somewhere Else

A bunch of things happened this weekend.

(I listened to ‘You Will be Found’ while writing this, I think you should too :) )

#1: On Friday, I went Geocaching… and found 11 Geocaches! (that is a lot.) There were a bunch in the park a few miles away and a few more in the streets surrounding it. Thankfully, I didn’t have to walk there as I normally do. Most of them were simple fake electrical plates, but others were more creative 3D printed caches… still pretty easy to find, though. This was by far the most I’ve found in a simple day (last time was about 6 or 7?) and was mostly just to bump up my find count. I’m at 50 now, halfway to triple digits :)

#2: On Saturday, I realised that LingoTWOW 5 responses were due today, so I watched 65B… and it turns out I won the entire language of Vietnamese. Yeah… I’ll be honest, I didn’t think through my response that much - I’m actually not very proud of that response, but hey, if it wins the entire language, I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. For context, languages with too few responses would get one final round before being retired, and the winner of the round will be declared ‘the winner’ of the language. There were two languages eliminated this round, Swedish and Vietnamese. I just gave you context without giving you context. You’re welcome.

#3: You remember that Reddit April Fools’ event from last year? You know, the one I spent ~50 man hours working on documenting? Yeah, it’s coming back. But this time… I can proudly say I am participating in the event as an April Knight. (God, I’m gonna need more context…) So, the April Knights are a group started on April Fools’ Day 2015 - ten years ago - and were a pretty big part in the event. They’ve continued to be this central authority on all things Reddit or April or Fools’, coordinating plans and shenanigans and whatnot. As silly as it sounds, I do think that I look up to these people. And, yesterday, I was able to do The Interview and become a Knight myself! Yeah, I’ve been meaning to do it since last year… but better late than never, right? The interview itself wasn’t that bad at all, but I was actually stressing throughout it. Anyway, I’m a knight now, woo!

#4: I spent about an hour and a half or so practically belting musicals in my bathroom while alone. Mostly ‘Legendary’ from Epic, though. (Also, when I was searching for covers of the song, looking up ‘legendary epic cover’ sounded so much more silly without context.) The fun thing is that it actually felt like I sang - I wasn’t worried about anyone hearing or judging me any more - in fact, maybe they’d enjoy it? Anyway, I was really working on my singing technique and all, and it just felt so fun just… singing. To be fair, I did have a blanket over the door to mute a bit of sound, but oh my goodness it sounded so much better than other times. I recorded myself and stitched the best bits of me singing together from different takes, and I’m actually so happy with the way it turned out! Unfortunately, since I wasn’t singing without a backing track it’s missing that little something, as well as me changing the tempo ever so slightly throughout the song, but that’s what next week is for!!

#5: I broke my 4x4 PB… by one second. It went from 1:25.94 to 1:24.49. The thing is, the cross and edge pairing were absolute amazing, and the F2L was pretty fast… but I got OLL parity. I knew I was on PB pace, so I did the alg as fast as I could… finished OLL and PLL… and barely broke my PB. But now I’m wondering how much faster I would’ve been if it weren’t for that pesky parity… darn. oh well, a PB’s a PB, right? And then, today, I got a new 5x5 PB. And this time, it wasn’t by 1 second. It was by 20!!!! 3:16.55 to 2:50.64, passing the 3:00 barrier :D I think I’m improving my weaknesses for big cubes - the whole edge pairing thing is gradually getting easier on 5x5. Anyway, the price I had to pay was my cube popping in the middle of the solve today, and it took a whole hour to rebuild because the pieces were slippier than usual, and none of my tape helped them stay in place. :( I mean, it was a small price to pay for all that.

I’m actually really happy for myself. :D See you next week!

[undertalecheckpoint]

23 March, 2025: Entry #62

Song: 062 - Oh! Dungeon

An entry on time! For once!

Yesterday, I set two PBs! 3x3 and 5x5! Here was the 3x3 scramble and solve…

Scramble: L2 D2 F2 D2 F U2 F2 U2 F D2 R2 D2 R' B U' F L F2 U L D' F'

Inspection: x2 x

Cross: F x' U B2 R2 D2

F2L: y' (R U R') U (R U' R) U' y (L' U L)

y2 (R U' R')

y' U' (L' U L)

y (L' U L)

OLL: U2 R U R U' R U2 R

PLL: U2 (R U R' U' R' F R2 U' R' U' R U R' F') U

So yeah, my cross the pretty good, my F2L was insanely lucky (as in, I have no idea what the odds are, three pre-made pairs in a row!), and my OLL and PLL were two cases that were easy to recognise. And the time is… 18.28! Before that, my PB was 24.95, so it was quite a jump! And 5x5, my new PB is 3:33:48, an improvement of a few seconds. Weirdly enough, from my PBs I learned what I really suck at. Turns out, I am really bad at F2L. I mean, I already knew that, but I didn’t know that I sucked that badly. So I’ve been drilling that instead of PLL, getting my AO12 to 32 seconds! Meanwhile, at big cubes, my worst part is edge pairing. On 4x4, it’s not too bad, I’m almost doing it without pausing, but on 5x5, it is slowing me down by so much. That, combined with when I start to solve it like a 3x3. For some reason, the transition is really jarring, so I’m just fumbling while making the cross, second-guessing myself…

Yesterday, I also went Geocaching. I ended up with three finds. Here’s one of the entries:

“This was my second stop on my long walk today. I followed the bike trail to get here, to find out there was a kid's baseball game going on at the same time... and someone happened to be sitting right over where the cache was supposed to be. I didn't get a good look on account of not wanting to look weird, so I decided to circle back, grabbing another cache before coming back here. Surprisingly, the game was still going on... and the guy was still there. However, I did spot the cache this time around. Eventually, I summoned enough courage to... just ask the guy to move for a second, dodging to get out of the way of someone else's recording. Unfortunately, like many others before me, I made the mistake of scraping my knee on the bleachers... Awkward. 

All that to say, I found it! TFTC and cheers :)”

(TFTC meaning “thanks for the cache”. Also, for context, someone else mentioned that they scraped their knee on the bleachers trying to get the cache.)

See you next week!