Interipelli's Journal

2025-03-30

Raindare has begun documenting her favourite drinks and writing new fictional things. In the meantime, I've been unpacking boxes and slowly adding new content and scans I'd had saved from a backlog assembled just before the physical move.

I thought I hated the cold. It was a constant nuisance in graduate studies within upstate New York, the way that snow would get into boots and freezing rain would stick into the wrinkles of my face. The way that aluminum laptops would bend and latches stick if left to the elements for too long. However, nearly four weeks in Ontario alternating between snow storms, ice storms, and short periods of sun has made me feel somehow nostalgic for a time that wasn't quite as I remember it.

We've started Dragon Shadow Spell, the Black/Matrix OO follow up that's like a gorgeous, high resolution (by PS2 standards) Final Fantasy Tactics with a setting closer to Phantasy Star Online. An unexpected combination. If Japanese wikis are to be believed, there's an alleged focus on gay male couples. Not too far off from Black/Matrix by any means, though it's still unusual to have more than one. Raindare remains interested. We'll see what lies ahead.

2025-03-10

Moving to Ontario has gone well; I'm looking forward immensely to our new life here.

2025-02-11

For the last three weeks and up through May, I've been acting as a teacher's assistant for a course introducing computer science and project planning fundamentals. This has been a highlight in between the more pertinent work of moving forward immigration affairs. It is fascinating to see how younger people relate to computers now, and to some degree I'm not sure that teaching has changed all that much. Yes, students can "cheat" with generative AI, but it wasn't all that long ago when the most visible solution online was Experts Exchange, a popular means to give folks (bad) advice absent useful reasoning, for a fee.

Events of the last month have reminded me that even family members I often look up to tend not to recognize trouble is brewing until it affects them. I am doing my best to be patient, as I try to move quickly when I can, when there is news to act upon.

2025-01-01

All of the Shin Devil Children fan fiction I had planned for 2024 is finished, leaving only Raindare's chapters (Grocery Run and Through the Circle) as remaining works in progress. She's still tied up by other fiction projects that she can't talk about right now. We're both quite proud of how this little exercise turned out.

Wrapping up 2024, we've got one final retrospective following up where the mid-year retro left off. These will be the last of the behind the scenes website meta articles. I think our work speaks for itself.

2024-11-22

Stuck in the middle of things are happening, outcomes are uncertain, and I can't talk about it. Not the worst place to be in, but then, well, that's not exactly easy to write a compelling journal around, is it?

I've heard that "infrastructure teams run on hope." That goes for people who make tools for a living and as a hobby. I suspect this goes for all creators on some level, with substantial variation in what that hope is.

This website appears to have become Write in Blood, inconsistently veering between fiction and reams of pagination documenting influences from a specific generation of video games. There are worse things to be.

2024-08-13

The presentation I gave in the Bay Area was better received than I expected. Truth be told, I constantly fumbled every practice run I had leading up to it until I decided, forget everything else, get some damn sleep and make sure I'm well rested for the event.

Well, that worked. I had four minutes removed from what I was told would be a ten minute presentation, but I had the practice runs timed by stopwatch so I could figure out when to expand, when to condense, and what were the necessary bits. Ended up sharing all I needed while keeping my composure without resorting to stupid tricks like talking too damn fast.

I can't share much more than that, besides one tiny anecdote. Sleeping in a parking garage by a NASA research centre is quite tolerable with earplugs.

Site navigation got a bit of a reshuffle when I came back to better reflect current interests and what's active. Don't worry, nothing's truly lost. All past URLs remain functional. The major shift is that some inactive content that was two clicks from home now requires looking for something else that's related.

2024-07-31

Six days ago I saw my landlord off as he was moving out of our shared building. A work accident left him in a brief coma, rather poorly timed between having a child and needing a new place to stay in.

All told he's in good spirits. We talked a bit about the state of the region, how he'll adjust to renting a house, and what he was hoping to do with his community before life circumstances got more complicated. He's walking, we're all grateful for that. I'm less certain about the state of this apartment complex for the foreseeable future, but then, nothing's certain really.

Four days ago I met with the lady and her husband behind the Princess Maker discord group. I wonder if bringing my Marathon shirt was a mistake, as I ended up talking a lot less about Black/Matrix, Devil Children and Princess Maker and a lot more about Bungie games and LucasArts titles that I have not played in ages. At the very least it gave me an excuse to dig up The Story of LucasFilm Games from PayPal's then-regular TechXploration talks. Small wonder so many haven't seen this retrospective of a once beloved adventure game developer.

Four days from now, I'll be on a train to the Bay Area heading to another work gathering. Not sure what to expect again. So far, putting in the effort to show up has been more than enough.