Category: Blag

October Vibes

October 28, 2025 / Keiya / 0 Comments

Pictured: This is Luna. This is what she does when it’s even remotely cold and/or too bright outside for her to nap. She can’t cover her face with her paws like the other cat because her precious tiny paws are just too small and too ineffective for face covering, thus the face plant.

We’re so close to chilly fall weather over here in Southern California, but not quite. October is such a tease over in these parts; Rampant commercialism always teases lovely sweater days and steamy apple cider laden mornings amidst falling leaves but in reality, we had like, one really really chilly weekend because of some freak storm and then it’s back up to oscillating between a pleasant 70-something and a not-so-pleasant 90-something degrees. Super awesome.

The official barometer and Fall determinator is that It’s not cool weather season yet until the tiny black cat starts sleeping on the bed again. Anyhoo, here’s a bunch of random stuff that I have enjoyed or have been up to within the past month or so.

At the beginning of this year, I had started regularly running. As in, running at least 3 to 4 times a week instead of the token once or twice a month run that I had done for the previous x years. It has paid off in dividends in stamina improvement and stuff like that. I can’t wait until the weather cools down a bit more so that I can go run outside more.
We also started going to the gym regularly again and getting hella back into weight lifting. In college I was big into lifting but that kind of dropped off after graduation. I really missed lifting and feel a bit silly that it took this long to pick it back up. Adding lifting to my exercise routine feels so much more balanced than running for like 30 to 60 minutes 3 to 5 days a week.
Busy busy this year with travel to various places for personal enjoyment and work. No Japan trip this year, but probably next year. I just got back from Europe and feel a little done with flying for now.
While we are on the topic of flying: On the flight over to Europe, I had the whole ass entire row to myself the entire time. I’ve never had that happen before. Glorious.
The Final Fantasy Tactics remaster is 😙🤌. It’s such a great game and I am really enjoying playing again, especially with the full voice over.
Also No Man’s Sky continues to be awesome, particularly with the latest Corvette updates.
I played the BALL x PIT demo for kind of a long time for a demo. I really want to purchase the full game, but I really want to finish FFT and some of the other games that I have in my backlog before diving into another roguelite.
I have an enormous backlog of games that I want to play, maybe I’ll get around to buying and playing them now that the days are getting shorter. I haven’t felt super compelled to sit in front of the computer or TV and game in a while, since it’s been nice out.
Oh also: October = ⚾️. Go Dodgers.

PS: I don’t think I ever posted my Japan pictures here from literally almost a year ago lol.

Happy 2025

March 4, 2025 / Keiya / 0 Comments

I’ve been meaning to update this blog for the past 6 months, but never quite seem to get around to it as I feel like I am either busy, working on a personal project, or out and about. But this is, more-or-less, what I have been up to:

The stupid plants are still alive and thriving. More stupid plants were purchased recently-ish and have joined the stupid plant collective
We did a Japan trip this past November. I’ll get around to posting photos at some point. Biked the Shimanami Kaido which was an absolute S-Tier experience.
Techo Kaigi for 2025 has changed. I do actually intend to write an actual post on that.
I’ve gotten super into running and trail running this year. I can now casually do an easy 5k at lunch, quickly clean off, eat, and then go back to work/meeting/whatever without looking and feeling like ass afterwards. I’ve been trying to start a daily running habit on and off (mostly off) for years, and it’s never really stuck until now.
I really look forward to days getting longer and being able to hike more after work without having to shift my day earlier. I however, don’t look forward to it being hot AF.

Current games being played: Oscillating between my Sims 4 legacy family and No Man’s Sky.

My Stupid Plants

August 2, 2024 / Keiya / 0 Comments

I had purchased this pachypodium saundersii years ago, pre-COVID during a local plant sale. She’s pretty hardy as she just lives on a table in the backyard in mostly full sun year round and hasn’t died off or suffered too much from overexposure of any kind (we live in a favorable succulent environment so overexposure isn’t too much of a concern, but it did rain quite a bit the last year or two and it can dip into almost freezing at night a few times in the Winter).

I had finally, years later, re-potted her into a container other than the ugly plastic one that it came in. I always see pictures of these with gorgeous thick caudexes. I have a feeling that I need to water her more, especially now when it is hot AF.

This is Bob the coffee plant. Bob lives outdoors on the porch. I would love for Bob to live in the house in a window or something, but I cannot trust the orange one not to eat the plants. One of the few plants that I own that regularly requires actual watering. The goal here is a long term one: Keep Bob alive, let him thrive, may be at some point down the line enjoy coffee beans; But I think for the time being, not dying is a good starting point.

My Techo Kaigi for 2024

January 27, 2024 / Keiya / 0 Comments

I have seem the term, “techo kaigi” floating around various journaling and planning blogs, channels, and communities that I follow online. It is a Japanese term that translates to notebook/planner meeting and roughly refers to a self-reflective meeting that one has with themselves to review what planning systems did or did not work and why. I find it to be a good end-of-year and mid-year audit of personal organization and project systems. It’s also a good opportunity to review if any personal needs have changed to warrant something new being added or removed. And if we are all being perfectly honest, it is also an opportunity to treat myself to new stickers or something like that.

At one point in time I had tried containing all of my journaling and planning to one or two notebooks but I am terrible at journaling regularly in any capacity whatsoever and well, life is too short to only use a mere one or two notebooks anyway. So, I will take what I can get which usually means writing, drawing, or scribbling in any number of notebooks or digital devices whenever I feel like.

New Customized Keyboard

January 20, 2024 / Keiya / 0 Comments

About a half-year ago I had purchased a budget keyboard for work and personal use off of Amazon (an Epomaker RT100 for about $100); My 75% keyboard is great for personal use and light travel where I need a keyboard, but not so great for work-at-home because it really annoys me not having a numpad to use. The keyboard was great, up until the point where it wasn’t and the entire QWERTY row just died. Unfortunately, I was way outside of the return period so I took it as an opportunity and a sign to just upgrade to something that is a little bit better.

Brand: Keychron Q6 Pro
Switches: Gateron Pro Yellow
Keycaps: Pink Milk & Honey XDA profile PBT keycaps
Mods: 2x tempest tape mod, force break mod, poron case foam.

Technically, 88.88% Gateron Pro Yellows with exactly 8 Keychron banana switches because the RT100, the board I pulled the switches from, is a 96% and not full-size. At some point in the near future I will get new linear swit ches whenever it is that I figure out which ones I want.

The force break and tape mods get got rid of the metallic ping from the aluminum case.

My Battlestation: July 2023

July 17, 2023 / Keiya / 0 Comments

Obviously I need even more screens on my desk. Finally bought a laptop arm (rightmost side of desk) on Prime Day for my work laptop so that I don’t have to constantly shuffle the dice tower and whatever else is on the rightmost side of my desk whenever I join a meeting.

Not pictured: The canvas bag full of unorganized crafty/journaling things on the floor next to my desk and my GUNPLA backlog.

Musings on Starforged (TTRPG)

November 22, 2022 / Keiya / 0 Comments

A while back I came across Quest Calendar on Reddit/Kickstarter, a single-player RPG in the format of a tear-off day calendar; It’s a fun RPG that only takes a few minutes out of your day to play. It has also opened the door for me to explore the Solo RPG genre, which I was previously unaware had even existed. I have been playing Starforged on-and-off for a few months and it is positively delightful; It’s a PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) based tabletop RPG that can be played either solo, co-op or guided; My chosen method of play is sort of a blend between a tabletop roleplaying game and a creative writing prompt.

You see, I love journaling and drawing/watercoloring as a form of personal creative expression and I really like dice rolling TTRPGs. I also really really love world building but I really really don’t want to DM a game. Starforged seems to do a decent job of scratching the odd combination of all 3 itches. So lately, there have been more than a few evenings spent with my Traveler’s Notebook, a printout of some of the rules, dice, a cup of tea, and background music to set the mood. It’s also nice having other activities that aren’t in front of a screen or don’t require daylight and expensive sporting equipment.

One thing that I really like about PbtA systems (vs D20 based systems like DND) is that I feel it is a better balance of chunky stat things vs narrative based actions. The systems is also open enough to make it fairly easy to incorporate other role-playing systems. For example, I really like Stars Without Number’s method of sector generation as it’s more comprehensive so I have been using a blend of SWN and Starforged to generate new sectors and planets. I might integrate some of the ship building and ship combat rules, but I don’t want my campaign to get too mechanically “chunky” so we’ll see.

Here’s a couple of things that I have bookmarked that I either use or have bookmarked to look into:

Stars Without Number: Mentioned above
Bucket of Bolts: Another indy solo space RPG. I really like the idea of playing through this and then integrating any characters and ships into my Starforged campaign.
Starship Geomorphs 2.0: In-depth ship building. It looked neat.
itch.io Starforged Jam: Community created extended Starforged content. The Cyberpunk playkit interests me greatly as I am enjoying Cyberpunk 2077 play #2 (inspired by watching Edgerunners).

…I also really love how the community has officially unofficially adopted the standard sized Traveler’s notebook as an analog medium for this game. I have a notebook insert and folder with laminated cheat sheets that I use during play sessions.

Happy November

November 18, 2022 / Keiya / 0 Comments

I am not really great about updating this site, am I? I had a random actual/digital life update post sitting in drafts from way back in May but I think most of that is old news now. Anyhoo:

With the news that Japan would be opening up for tourism in October, we had quickly planned a November trip at the end of September. We actually just got back this week. Fabulous time as usual, I have a mountain of images to sort through, edit and post, which will be hopefully mostly done by next week because I kind of wanted to show them to family at Thanksgiving.
This is old news but my solution to needing a new personal computer and not wanting to deal with any GPU or CPU shortage was to just buy a MacBook Pro. A+, would recommend.
The bag that I use for my photography & adventure every day carry has once again changed, so I’ll make a post about that at some point.
A while back I came across a TTRPG system called Ironsworn and had bookmarked the site and put off looking into it. What I found interesting about it was that it could be played both solo and co-op. Recently-ish, Ironsworn: Starforged, a sci-fi themed followup RPG was released. I’ll make a separate post about this at some point but I have been playing it on-and-off in my spare time and it is very fun. It scratches a very specific analog creative writing/journaling, dice rolling, and world building itch. I’m really sad that I had missed the kickstarter.
I had this paragraph typed out in late May about how I had started up the Final Fantasy XIV trial again and was enjoying it but that phase only lasted about a month or so and I haven’t touched it since. Triple Triad for life though.
Finished reading Dragons of Deceit, the new Dragonlance novel on the plane trip over to Narita and started up The Expanse series. Slowly working through my reading backlog…

My Customized Traveler’s Notebook

May 28, 2022 / Keiya / 0 Comments

I recently ordered and received a customized standard-sized Traveler’s Notebook from Baum-Kuchen. I have been wanting to order one for a while so as soon as they had re-opened the service, I contacted their lovely team to work out the details of my request. I have always wanted a camel Traveler’s Notebook and have always wanted a customized Traveler’s Notebook, so great opportunity to fulfill both wants.

My Tokyo Station Traveler’s Notebooks is what I have been using as my main journal for the past couple of years. I kind of baby it because it is one of my favorite souvenirs from our first trip to Japan. As such, whenever I take it anywhere, it is usually in a canvas carrier to prevent it from getting scratched up; Which is fine, but that makes it kind of a chunky thing to carry anywhere and prevents it from developing a nice patina like my passport Traveler’s Notebook. I kind of just throw my passport TN in my bag since it functions as a planner and extended wallet. Because of that, the leather has become nice and supple and broken in with a lot of character.

Hello and Happy 2022

March 8, 2022 / Keiya / 0 Comments

Hello there, long time no post. I have this backlog of photos to edit in Lightroom and (maybe) post somewhere, but just haven’t gotten around to doing that for reasons. This post was actually written in July of 2021, sat in the editing queue for around 7 odd months until now, March of 2022. At some point I’ll post a picture dump of all of the cool things that we’ve done. Maybe.

So on the topic of biking. I figured out what was causing the saddle and hand pain whenever we went out to ride: The bike I was using was too big. I was using my husband’s old bike which is a men’s large. The seat to pedal distance was fine, so I figured it was fine but the problem was that it was too long, causing my to lean forward too much. Sold that bike to a friend who really needed one and who fit it perfectly, purchased a new bike which fits me perfectly. According to online measurements, I am between a small and medium, leaning towards medium. A small fit me perfectly so that is what we got. New bike has a 1×10 drivetrain instead of a 3×8.

We have gotten into GUNPLA (Gundam Plastic Model) building lately. I have always wanted to build one but for some reason, I was under the impression that the kits required painting and gluing like Warhammer or most other model kits that I have seen. Painting and gluing is beyond the barrier of entry for whatever effort I am willing to put into novice model building.

The kits are pre-painted snap fit. The only tool that you actually need is a nipper to snip the pieces off of the plastic runner and optionally, a hobby knife and maybe sand paper to clean up the nub marks. GUNPLA seems to be the natural evolution for web + likes LEGO and building things. Also a great, “It’s hot outside and I need something to do indoors” type of hobby. Many regrets not getting into GUNPLA before going to Japan or at least before everything was closed for COVID reasons.

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